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
March 1, 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 $911.31 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. February is always a big month for dividends and they’re always reinvested. Eventually this nest egg will grow enough to cover more than one month of our expenses, per year.
(more…)
February 28, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 340: Woof. Still recovering from the weekend physically. And I foolishly skipped the full dose of diphenhydramine I’ve been taking to force myself to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. On purpose or by accident? I don’t remember. Either way, I couldn’t sleep until very late and then couldn’t get up early. Sigh. I don’t want to be dependent on a sleep aid in the sense that I always need it to help me sleep at a reasonable hour but I am very dependent on sleep to live. Not loving this impasse. But for now I’m putting myself back on the full dose this week to get my body the rest it needs.
Upon emerging from our bedroom, in my haze, I was greeted by a chuckling Smol escaping from the bathroom, zipper bag of trial size mouthwashes swinging from one hand, headed straight for my knees. They were in such a good mood, it was a bit contagious, especially when they started chasing me around the house cackling.
*****
I’m fighting with myself to maintain a healthy boundary in one of my relationships. A loved one is having financial difficulties after an already long and arduous road to get where they are today. I have been supporting them for years in various ways, knowing that I have to NOT go overboard and have been relatively good about making myself stick to boundaries, but I still instinctively want to rescue them. I know that is unsustainable, it can’t be my (fifth) job, and it cannot be what my life revolves around. But it’s still hard to tell that part of me to sit down and just care without trying to take on their burdens for them.
This impulse is what my biodad played on for so long and it needs to be corralled.
I also have to stop feeding that deep down belief that I only have value when and if I help people. I need to find the belief that I am a good enough person as is somewhere in me.
***** (more…)
February 25, 2022
1. I’d forgotten how I once dreamed of horses. I wanted my life to revolve around dogs and horses. I devoured every story I could, Misty of Chinoteague, The Black Stallion, series of girls and racehorse books that I can’t remember the title of now, to the real stories about Man o’War, Secretariat and Seabiscuit. Watching a short clip of Secretariot brought tears to my eyes remembering how much I loved riding and grooming horses. Watching all of Secretariat’s Triple Crown races turned me into a faucet. I am grateful that my parents indulged paying for my riding lessons if I could get a ride there. I wonder if I can ever do that again.
Challenges this week: So many terrible things happening in the world. Gov Abbott is trying to attack trans kids in Texas, Florida is putting kids at increased risk of abuse, abortion rights are under fire everywhere, and now Russia invading Ukraine. It’s all awful.
Rabbi Danya calls us to action.
Urge your lawmakers to support the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA):
Monday, the Senate has its first vote on WHPA (the Women’s Health Protection Act), the bill that would legalize abortion federally even if SCOTUS overturned Roe. It has already passed the House.
(more…)
February 22, 2022
I get a turn?
JB’s normally an equal opportunity attention hound with a STRONG preference for PiC. Lately, they’ve been coming to me for more attention, hugging me more, calling me Mommy, and asking me to read to them for bedtime. Up until a couple months ago, they actively did not want me to read to them to the point that when PiC would come to say goodnight if I was reading, they’d remove the book from my hand and say ok! Daddy can read now!! (Implied: byyyyeeeee-eeeee)
It’s rather bemusing. They’ve always been his and the two of them always enjoyed a very close relationship. Usually I’m just orbiting their cozy companionship. I can’t even say I’m out of practice being wanted, I was never wanted long enough to GET in practice. I always assumed I’d have my turn when the time was right but I didn’t expect it to feel so weird when it did come around.
With Smol, I’m wanted about as often as PiC is and that’s also a funny feeling. I like being wanted sometimes but it’s an unusual feeling. Of course we both play second fiddle to JB, the apple of Smol’s eye.
Life with Smol Acrobat
We’re entering my favorite baby stage where Smol has a tiny modicum of understanding of the world and is soaking it all up and banging on everything to see what that does.
I’m restraining myself from assisting the way I would a few months ago and displayed no awareness of space or gravity. They dropped a book off a step and instead of pitching facefirst off the step as usual going after it, they carefully sat down, braced their body, and reached down only after they were properly stable. I was so proud!
I also love their penchant for cuddles. They love to come lay their head on my face or head, sometimes at speed which results in a BONK, sometimes gently where it feels like getting a kitty face rub. (more…)
February 21, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 333: Our week of summer ended with yesterday’s warmth and fancy free sunshine. Today we’re back to cold, fog, and gloom. Brrrrrr!
*****
I was in a real mood all morning and because my brain was operating entirely off-kilter, ended up doing my work out of preferred order which just made it worse. I ended my morning work session without a certain amount of work done and the out of orderness meant that all the wrong and more irritating work was front and center.
I griped to PiC like a giant baby about my mood over lunch.
Smol’s staying awake longer between their first and second naps which means taking a 3-4 hour break from work that we have to get done later.
He had some emails to tackle after lunch but decided it was more important to go out with me, Sera, and Smol for a longer walk. It did help my mood so I’m glad he did.
Joking darkly with Abby about wanting to quit my job and how we’d engineer a windfall also helped.
We had our first Bentocart delivery which just happened to have enough Italian to work with the heart shaped pasta that JB asked for at the grocery store over the weekend to make an Italian dinner. Smol enjoyed 1.5 (weirdly buttery and weirdly delicious) meatballs and a double (adult) handful of heart pasta enough to feed themselves and thus redeemed themselves after yesterday’s dinner disaster where I felt like a failure because I couldn’t get the child to consume more than half a banana.
I keep forgetting that this kid isn’t a black hole for food and it is royally confusing when they eat like a small toddler with a moderate appetite. Tonight was better.
Speaking of forgetting things. I wasn’t feeling the same level of steaming garbage pain and fatigue as usual this morning and irrationally expected myself to feel happy as a result. Except everything else was still the same: COVID, working from home, no childcare, no under-5 vaccine, still juggling crappy conditions at work, still frustrated as hell over various family situations, still unable to plan anything for the year because so much that might be something to look forward to is dependent on a vaccine.
Big worries, small irritants, everything in between, that’s all the same even if I got half a decent night of sleep and don’t want to cry when I take two steps. I forget that feeling physically better isn’t a cure-all, it just feels like it should be.
*****
I’m feeling some real pressure to get JB enrolled into sports. They really miss their swim lessons, and I really want them to learn how to swim well before too long and while they still have the drive to learn. It’s an important life skill. They also need another activity to build their stamina. We’d been exploring either gymnastics or martial arts to start a second thing pre-pandemic but of course that plan went to hell. I feel like time is getting away from us. Suddenly they’re seven years old but can’t swim well because they’ve lost 2.5 years of practice. At the same time, we’re still in a holding pattern of juuuuuust keeping it together and I want to cry at the thought of adding one more thing to our plates. I guess the one thing that’s improved is as much of a handful as Smol is, they’re bigger and getting a bit easier to manage in some ways. Mostly not easy but still, as much as I love squashy infants, they are an absolute wrecking ball of work and fussiness. Smol has their things but they’re better now. So maybe that pressure has let up just enough for us to be able to take on something else for JB.
PiC has taken charge of getting information for some sports for us to evaluate. When I get over this feeling of overwhelm, we’ll sit down and figure something out.
I wish this dog could help me out.
*****
Smol’s firsts: they’re trying to give kisses now which are more like getting licked by a suckerfish. They also started rage squealing and biting when thwarted in their attempted to break into a cabinet so that’s a lot of fun.
Year 2, Day 334: What. A. Day.
Our tiny terrorist had a little mercy on us and didn’t wake everyone up at 5 am. That was much appreciated.
I’m frustrated with some things at work. Things are slowly improving, they’re a world better than they were last fall, but we’re only halfway through the struggle, I think. The internal issues all need time and patience to work out and I’m, as previously advertised, perilously in short supply of both. We’ll get through it, I was just feeling it particularly hard today.
The external stuff is more frustrating. Our clientele of late have been a particularly trying lot. They lie, they behave unethically and try to get away with it (no), lie some more, act totally entitled, and THEN expect to be coddled. I am doing my best not to let my feelings splash out on my team but here I can say more honestly: I hate these people so much. I’m sick of this nonsense. Act right and tell the truth! *HARUMPH*
It’s not all of them but it’s a large enough subset to make me gnash my teeth several times a day and I don’t see an end to these. But, as a leader, I have to keep my hollering under wraps among my reports because I don’t want to demoralize them. I’m here to hear their frustrations and empathize and help, not to dump my annoyance on them. It’s a bit isolating at times but I don’t think it’d be a good thing if I did have someone in the company to whine at anyway, that’s a bad habit to get into. Anyway, after working late into the night to resolve one person’s problems they created and still having half the problem to go, I’m calling it quits for today. I’ve had more than enough and I’ll have to try again tomorrow.
I don’t know how people shake it when they’ve hit this level of funk with clients at a job but a way must be found and soon. Maybe the way is a long vacation.
*****
I did a combo Bentocart order and cooking dinner: tofu soup (mine), lentil salad (mine), and pulled pork salad (theirs). Everyone had their favorite thing but everyone had some lentils, even Smol, which was nice. We still have one entree left from our big Monday order to serve for tomorrow’s dinner so I’m happy with how this first order stretched so far. I am not sure next week will work as well, I was struggling to find anything that sounded particularly appealing for either Monday or Tuesday. But that’s my weird appetite thing again. Sometimes I want all the food, sometimes I’m meh about everything. It’s not helpful!
*****
Over the weekend, a conversation with Maggie reminded me that I hadn’t even looked at our Alaska Air miles since the pandemic started, after working so very hard to build up a stash of miles for our Imaginary Big Fancy Trip to Somewhere. That triggered a big dash of adrenaline-worry: Am I going to lose all our miles??? We were told that PiC’s stash was set to expire in ten days without account activity and they had no idea when mine would expire so I quickly made donations from our accounts and held my breath. Still holding my breath yesterday, the activity hasn’t recorded yet. It’s still within the 3-5 business days they estimated for posting the activity so I’m hoping that both of our accounts will be ok by the end of the week.
Year 2, Day 335: Smol’s mercy extended one more day which was fortunate and appreciated.
I continue to be frustrated by complex tasks cropping up at work but that’s what I’m paid to deal with. 😒 Meh.
I AM happy that Smol’s in my favorite age range with babies though. Smol gets into everything of course but they’re cute and little and walking like a determined and dizzy zombie, two arms extended forward, cackling or calling out nonsensical syllables like a tipsy town crier. They play in weird and interesting ways, they emote Really Intensely and cycle through emotions.
Oh! I emailed the local gym about their masking policies for the summer camp. I’m hoping they will require masking and JB might be able to do a week or two of summer gymnastics for fun at this age before it gets intense and competitive.
Year 2, Day 336: SCADS of Good News today! The HSA transfer from Random Crappy Company to Fidelity is done! WOO!
Both our Alaska Air mileage accounts updated to show activity so we are safe for another two years. I will plan to do a bit of card churning this year to add some miles too. Look at me, living with hope that we’ll ever travel again!
AND some good developments at work are happening. Really helpful for the morale.
Today is JB and PiC’s Friday, they both have Friday off. Lucky ducks! They did the Trader Joe’s run while I dealt with some pressing business and came home with 14 bananas because we’ve been eating them like monkeys lately. Literally. JB eats them upside down now. Because that’s how monkeys do it! Duh.
*****
Reflecting on how this week was different: we both felt that ordering premade meals for the start of the week made a huge difference in our stress levels. You could see it as simply paying for the privilege of moving the thinking about dinner to a different time but I perceive it very differently when I am setting up some orders for the next week rather than trying to get something now for tonight when I’m feeling the ticking of the clock as I / we have to make a decision with work demanding our attention and kids tugging at us and a dog to walk and and and. Planning ahead comes with an different kind of dopamine hit, the satisfaction of knowing you’ve settled a future question and you’re going to enjoy that later. It’s the same happy spot in my brain that loves travel planning even more than travel itself.
It also takes the pressure off in both not having to cook in that very small window of time between work and dinner and takes full cooking duties off both our plates for a couple days. It’s costly but I think I’m accepting that buying ourselves sanity this way is acceptable. We’ll do less when we have more childfree time back.
Year 2, Day 337: The Smol Acrobat is out of mercy. Up before 6 am making today feel like a Monday top to nearly bottom.
But since PiC had the day off, he caught the early baby, and I prepped their Adventure Lunch.
He went for a rare weekday run during Smol’s first nap while I worked and JB did chores and took TV breaks. They’re currently in love with Encanto video activities so they did a couple of those.
My break at lunch time was all about getting them out the door by noon, and off on an Adventure they went! Sera stayed home with me and for three blissful hours the house was otherwise empty. I had my pre-pandemic lunch of a cheese quesadilla eaten while hovering over my keyboard dashing through emails and I cleared enough of my work to be in shouting distance of caught up when they got back.
As Monday as it felt internally, PiC’s day off was greatly to my benefit to make it a Friday by the end of the night.
They all had a wonderful time out and about and came home in radiant moods. Smol passed out HARD when I put them down for a nap but was so happy that they didn’t even have the I’m sooooooo tired meltdown. JB floated on air the rest of the day.
:: Do you get all discombobulated by long weekends?
February 18, 2022
1. We get one week of summer a year and this was our week! Actual sun and heat and a light breeze: pure heaven. We got to spend a lot of time in the yard with Smol without having to bundle up in four layers, wash Sera, sit in the sun and read a book.
2. For the first time in the ten(?) years I’ve had my ibotta account, we bought a thing that had an actual bonus attached! It was for a $1 back for buying any brand seafood!
I’ve only been redeeming receipts for ten cent rewards in all this time so I haven’t even cashed out once. It’s a real bummer compared to other people’s earnings and I’ve been tempted to abandon it but I’m at the $16.50 now. I figure I’ll stick out until I get one $20 redemption and then I’ll close my account.
(more…)
February 15, 2022
Everyone handwaving COVID and omicron makes me want to bite something. It’s “just a cold”, it’s “no big deal”. Except for a lot of people, it causes Long COVID and there is not one thing in the list of Long COVID symptoms that makes me say yes sure sign me up! That’s because I know better – I already live with most of the COVID and Long COVID symptoms. In a nutshell, it sucks.
I talk about fatigue here a lot these. I talked about chronic pain here a lot over the years. I’ve lost a LOT to my chronic pain. My ability to enjoy most parts of life. My ability to function completely independently. My favorite hobbies in the world. My ability to care for myself. My ability to sleep. My ability to trust healthcare can help with anything. I was gaslit about my pain for over 20 years because they didn’t have the tools or training to help me.
I didn’t realize how much I was losing to my chronic fatigue, which I always chalked up to being tired of being in so much pain all the time – it’s exhausting walking around feeling like your entire body is on fire! It’s exhausting to experience inflammation in every joint. It was logical! After all if you’re twisted into knots with tension from pain, that’s tiring! Turns out that wasn’t the only problem.
Over the past two years, as my chronic pain baselines started to get lower, I noticed that my fatigue continued to get worse. That didn’t make sense. I’m not at all cured and I still hurt every minute of every day, but it’s less than before. Before was the equivalent of having various body parts clamped into a vise, cranked tight until just before you lose feeling, all the time. Now it’s more like it’s cranked halfway there. There’s a significant difference. Why is my fatigue still so deep?
I’m not just tired. Though, honestly, I don’t clearly remember how it feels for an adult human to have energy, I have an intellectual recollection. Once upon a time, if I could sleep, I’d wake up and feel like I’d slept. Not like I’d gone twenty rounds in a boxing ring. In the before times, if I ran to catch the bus, I’d huff for a while, catch my breath, and then feel ok enough to walk to my next stop. If I went for a run, I’d feel the burn, walk for a bit and then have a second wind to run back home.
That’s not how it works with chronic fatigue. When I sleep, I wake up feeling like I just hit pause on my downward spiral. I didn’t recharge or reset, I just slowed down the drain. When I walk or run, if I feel good enough, and I hit breathlessness, that’s where I’m stuck the rest of the day. But if I feel good, I have to take advantage of it because it’s going to go away no matter what I do. I can’t conserve it for later. There is no later for that very momentary bit of bliss where I almost feel like a human. If I choose to do an activity on the weekend, that’s the only one I get. I have to factor in a two hour rest period after the activity in hopes that will let me stabilize my tiredness enough to continue to function. If I’m fool enough to schedule two activities in a weekend, I will be scraping the bottom of the barrel for at least a week, probably two. If someone is a big enough jerk to expose me to their “just a cold” (a real cold), I will struggle to get back on track for six weeks and I will hold a grudge.
I start each day with the weight of an anvil on my chest. Bonus mornings bring with it 50 pound weights on each limb. Even worse mornings include all the above benefits PLUS the feeling of having been hollowed out so I could blow away with the next little breeze. Lucky I have those weights weighing me down! That’s how my day STARTS before I plunge into child caretaking, making breakfast, school dropoff, dog walking, more childcare, work, more childcare, more work, school pickup, more work and dog walking and household management and dealing with dinner and bath and bedtime or more work, then bedtime. I am (non sarcastically now) very lucky that PiC and I share the shareable load a lot without ever having to ask – he’s a fully capable responsible adult who wouldn’t dream of leaving it all to me. He always takes as much of the physical load as possible to spare me and I do much of the planning and logistics wrangling. But half of too much work is still a ton of work and I never start any day with a full tank of gas. If I’m particularly well off, I start with half.
All this to say: I DO NOT WANT COVID. I’ll never understand how people can blithely dismiss the risk to others if they had an easy experience with it. “We had it and we were fine, why vaccinate?” I hear way too often. I knew people were selfish but this is a PARTICULARLY awful kind of selfish that truly doesn’t care if it destroys lives.
In any case, I have no interest in arguing with those people. I’m not going to change their minds and my energy is far too precious to throw away on knuckleheads.
On the chronic fatigue front, I have been getting some medical guidance on managing it a bit better than I have been.
I used to take magnesium for restless leg symptoms I’d get now and again and a Vit B complex. We have added Vit D, zinc, coQ10, omega3 fatty acids, and Vit C. My doc also prescribed a medication recommended for fatigue as an off label use for days when I’m flattened and really cannot afford to be. It becomes ineffective if taken it on a regular schedule so it’s prescribed as “take on random mornings as needed.” Hilariously my doc apologized that the prescription sounded so weird but that’s exactly what I wanted. I’m not looking for a habitual medication-based fix, mainly because I know there isn’t one short of going with hard drugs (I hear that’s one reason cocaine was so popular and I get it boy do I get it but also boy do I not want to get addicted to cocaine), I just need some help to survive on the worst days. For the days that range between the worst and the best, I’m relying on lifestyle-based changes.
In some ways the lifestyle changes are a disappointing route to take. The major theme is don’t do the things. Don’t do all of them. Don’t do most of them. Only do the ones you can do without hitting your hollowed out, point of collapse, feeling.
You know how little that leaves me? With MAYBE one fun thing per week for up to two hours. Sometimes I don’t even feel up to that much.
It’s a hell of a way to live but I’m still more fortunate than most and I do want to make the most of what time I have. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to gamble with what I do have in the lottery of “will it be ‘mild’ COVID with long lasting effects or not?” I truly don’t understand people who blithely assume everything will be fine if they get it and that they’ll get great medical care if they need it. That has not been the experience of many people with long term illness or disability.
I don’t have any grand conclusion because I’m still living this chronic life. But I refuse to voluntarily make it worse!