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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March 25, 2022
1. I wish I’d also gotten the manufacturer coupon to stack with the deal but I found our usual brand shampoo and conditioner (2 each) from Walgreens for $20 (before tax) and $5 Walgreens reward cash, making it $7.50 for a pair. I’d have had to buy 5 sets plus their $10 off $40 to come close to the same pricing from Target.
2. Smol’s very vocal but has only experimented with lots of different sounds without any real attempt to assign meaning to them yet. Still. They still don’t call any of us anything, we are just “high pitched excited shriek”. So it was a real shocker when they were asking for apples and SAID “Ah-pa” several times. Practically a word!
Giving
I’ll do another round of donations to support refugees in Ukraine and trans kids in the states.
Shep shared to their friend Jelena and friends’ campaign to provide food and supplies for those in Afghanistan.
Arlan Hamilton shared Beauty 2 the Streetz.
Challenges this week: Kid germs are the pits.
We’re having to schedule activities for JB and family plans through the end of summer but we still know nothing about under-5 vaccines. Sigh. I’m using this NPR page to keep an eye on the status of the review of vaccines. This latest on Moderna efficacy has me disheartened. I feel like I’m grasping at straws trying to find hope in the CNN overview.
Return to work has been especially rough on the adults.
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March 22, 2022
Academics
JB has been struggling with math reasoning. They’ve memorized enough answers that they have been spending the past semester refusing to use their strategies and literally coming up with their answers and writing out the strategies afterward to match their answer. No wonder they don’t know what the hell they’re doing when faced with a word problem.
This wakes up all my personal math related anxiety and deep fear that they’re going through what I did with math. I never did understand the concepts that my brain elided over in geometry and algebra. It literally would not stick no matter what the teacher or tutor explained and I felt dumb as a rock. I don’t want that for my kid!
We’re tackling this from multiple angles. PiC and I are both doing daily reinforcement in the form of conversational pop quizzes and sharing our personal strategies for solving arithmetic mentally. Most of that is PiC, I am terrible at this. And thank goodness we have support for the rest of this school year from their tutor but they’re not going to have that in second grade. I hate this and I hate that their teacher didn’t bother to tell us when this first started.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol’s been working on drinking from open cups, a messy proposition at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. After dozens of tries, and fights because they wanted to hold the cup of water independently and throw it over their head but I wouldn’t let go entirely and therefore am just the worst person ever, something clicked and they more frequently tried to drink than to shake the cup. They still shake it and still get a face full of water.
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When we realized we had six more months without childcare, I looked through Lakeshore’s catalog for some educational things to help us get through. Everything was so expensive that I held off and thankfully they have hit a stage where anything “new” is entertaining.
JB used to rummage through the recycling bag regularly. Now all our recycling gets handed to Smol for a day before it goes out.
Smol has the standard sets of blocks handed down from JB. Other perfectly acceptable toys and games: a jar without the lid and a spoon to walk around stirring. Bonus games: wielding the spoon but lost the jar. Also wearing the jar on their fist but lost the spoon. Oh found the spoon while holding the jar! Throw yourself at mom in excitement. My take home kit from the dentist is excellent to chew on. A newspaper torn into strips, we hand the sheaf back and forth, one by one.
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Smol is very into animals. They ask for each of their little plastic animals to be held up for them to kiss. They love tiny fingerpuppet animals, those all get a kiss. Sera comes in for lots and lots of pets and attempted cuddles which are still very confusing to her at all times.
*****
Those little eyes are hilarious.
They’ve been practicing a wicked burn sideeye, the intensity of which can scorch a trail across its path, but for the pleased mischievous grin that bursts out after a particularly successful glare.
When PiC and I stand side by side facing them, Smol’s eyes flick back and forth between the two of us faster and faster until you could set a metronome to the flicking. They are mightily amused by this too. As am I.
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Pupdate
Sera isn’t super pleased about this development but I’ve woken up to one of my dog caring responsibilities that I’ve been leaving by the wayside from overwhelm: dental care. I feel terribly that I’ve not been attentive to her teeth but I know it’s because I literally could not handle one more caring thing. Now I can, so I do. I brushed her teeth gently 5 times a week but will likely need to budget for a dental cleaning for her this year. Sigh. It was likely necessary this year anyway, I think she’s ten this year if you can believe that.
She is not a great paw at hide and seek. I had tucked myself into a corner of the bedroom for a quiet moment. At the sound of paws in the hallway, I called her over for a pet.
No response.
I called her again.
No response.
I poked my head out and saw her staring fixedly at the wall, confused. I called again. She jumped and then came over wagging her tail.
She had no idea where I was. 🤦🏻♀️ Her nose is apparently not that good.
Precious Moments
JB explaining cotton candy: they basically take clouds and turn them into sugar?
JB: what’s the letter at the end of the rainbow?
We look at each other.
PiC: w.
JB: Ugh! Don’t tell her!
Me: I know how to spell rainbow!!
Smol Acrobat holding a twin pack of toothbrushes runs past: yahhh yah yahhhh!!!
March 21, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 361: *The day numbering reflects when I started chronicling our lives in the pandemic, about a week or two into the shutdowns.
This two year “anniversary” of when our lives all turned upside and stayed upside down has been bonus difficulty levels with a yucky cherry on top. We’re all frustrated and angry because even with little bits of “normalcy” like in person school for JB, everything else remains so topsy turvy that the stressors outweigh any good exponentially.
I’m starting to feel some resentment that folks have routine childcare support and we don’t even though I care about them and want them to have it. Or envy of that resource at least. I’m most definitely resentful that companies are acting like things can go back to normal now and are scheduling in person travel and conferences as if we parents of under 5s don’t have ENTIRELY unprotected kids. I’m so angry and tired of feeling like every minute of every single day is a slog because we can never take a break. We can swap off childminding for an hour or two at a time, yes, but there are always chores to do and there is always household stuff to do and we are always fighting against a tsunami of Needs to carve out any time for ourselves. And then I feel like an absolute heel for complaining, even just in my head or here, because there are lots of people who are in far far far worse situations.
*****
Some of this is because things that were already hard are going to get even harder. PiC has to go back to work on site. He now has conferences that require him to travel. I have absolutely ZERO idea how we’re going to manage that.
Spring break and summer are fast approaching. We’ve looked at multiple scenarios and they’re mostly impossible to manage because it adds hours of commute in addition to our work and Smol Acrobat schedules. And no matter what we choose, daycare or some combination of camps and at home virtual stuff, it’s going to cost $2000 a month just for JB.
I broke down and cried today. I don’t know how much more I can give.
***** (more…)
March 18, 2022
1. It continues to be the little things. I figured out my egg peeling problem had nothing to do with my cooking and cooling methods but rather my cracking method. I went back to my original thousand taps to crack it all around method and we’re all clear now.
2. Speaking of good and eggs, Bentocart menu options were too limited. Either the menu items weren’t appealing or they were wildly overpriced. We tried Good Eggs this week instead.
A friend shared this fundraiser: Help House Two Native Elders Part 2
Challenges this week: talked to JB about our family’s experience as refugees, to help them understand the situation many people globally face.
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March 14, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 354: Smol started the festivities at FIVE AM.
I, having had severe heartburn until 2 am, was less than pleased. And less than half conscious. Thank goodness PiC took them for the morning round as usual.
I finally crawled out just after 7 am, barely functional and wishing for day’s end. What a way to start the week!
*****
JB had the gall to watch PiC making their lunch, to their exact specifications, and then asked: can I buy lunch today?
I came down on that like a ton of bricks. How rude!! Children, I tell ya.
*****
We had leftover ramen for lunch, yum. I’m glad that PiC pushed me into catering to my cravings yesterday. There was nothing on Bentocart we wanted so we decided that local takeout would be our “ease the pain” meals this week. It’s still surprising how much decision making capacity is freed up by choosing ahead of time to pay for just two meals that someone else cooks ready to reheat for dinners and maybe some leftovers for lunch. The planning ahead is one huge bonus, we’re no longer stressing over what to order and pick up while juggling two kids who need our attention now now now. We plan ahead and get the meals in the course of our chores. It also frees up enough energy to cook the rest of the week, without scraping rock bottom, or snarling to ourselves like bewildered rabid badgers!
Saturday afternoon I had cooked a big batch (4 large chicken breasts, from 2 Costco chicken packs) of the baked panko chicken. Remembering to spray oil on the foil before baking was instrumental to this batch turning out better than my first try and JB declared it their FAVORITE. That was a big enough batch for two dinners and a snack. I’d not have this foresight or energy without the takeout assist.
*****
I finally asked the right questions and updated my spreadsheets with a whole chunk of investing information on a portion of PiC’s portfolio I didn’t have before. We make decisions on that portfolio together but since I’d assumed the website was through his company intranet, I couldn’t access it. Not true! So now I have a whole load of information at my fingertips to work with and make better decisions with. That’s exciting.
***** (more…)
March 11, 2022
1. I had a massage on Friday that really helped my muscles loosen up and bonus didn’t have a massive pain rebound afterward. I still needed to lay down and rest more than half the day Saturday and a few hours pm Sunday but that’s still a bit of improvement.
Challenges this week: everything.
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March 8, 2022
With the usual caveats that I know that I’m usually doing the best I can with what I know / knew, and we’ve managed to make our way to a decent place financially with the requisite combination of hard work and good fortune, as I map out our 2022-2026(?) financial plans, I wonder what I don’t know now.
How much I didn’t know five, ten and fifteen years ago when I made important decisions about our money!
I didn’t know that my experiment with real estate wouldn’t necessarily be the game-changer originally hoped for, not when balanced against my desire to be an ethical rental owner who did repairs quickly, maintained the property well, and keeping rent relatively low. It’s possible that just putting that seed money into our investment accounts, and the maintenance costs over the years, would have generated similar or better returns for less angst and less work. But I also sold earlier than the plan originally called for so it’s also possible that had I held on to good renters for several more years, if the whole project hadn’t risen to truly irritating levels, it would have beaten market returns. It made enough to be worthwhile but it wasn’t as much fun as I had hoped.
I should have prioritized my make up retirement savings over JB’s 529 plan. I wonder if Nicole and Maggie talked about this earlier than 2016. If so, I should have thought about it in the context of my own plans and revised them. They definitely discussed prioritizing retirement over college savings, I just can’t remember when it was.
I made the mistake of mixing pre-tax IRA contributions and post-tax IRA contributions in the same account.
I definitely shouldn’t have believed my dad’s lies. I suppose the internet did tell me so at one point.
So….. what don’t I know enough about today?
Roth backdoor conversions always felt like a big pain that I couldn’t quite get my hands around until I realized that quite likely our income bracket at this point in life is the highest it’ll be versus in retirement.
I’m not sure how to untangle the withdrawals from my IRA when the time comes (with the mixed pre and post tax nonsense). The account is too old to see the original transactions but might try to sleuth out what the holdings were by the time I started mixing funds. That might be possible.
I don’t know of any cryptocurrency that makes sense to me and doesn’t seem to destroy our environment. I cannot get behind an alternative investing route that is so utterly destructive.
Health insurance (affordability, what plans will be available) in the next five to whatever years, if we should manage early retirement savings, is a total mystery. This is less a my-knowledge-is-lacking and more a what-on-earth-is-America-doing problem.
How much do we really need to have in liquid funds? Hindsight says we were too conservative from 2020-2021 but that’s also only because hindsight also knows we didn’t get laid off between 2020-2021. In the moment, we had no way of knowing whether that cash would be desperately needed to keep up with the bills.
When will we have enough for me to feel secure about subtracting work from both our lives and taking better care of my health? (What kinds of compromises will that create with the perception that if we don’t have to work anymore, we MUST have all kinds of free time?) I noodle around with various spreadsheets all the time because I enjoy mapping out those possibilities but PiC and I need to keep discussing our actual expectations for that life, too. It would be terrible to work hard for a future we don’t know what to do with.
Obviously there’s a lot more that I don’t know that I don’t know, particularly with our climate and the future of the US and whether our children are growing up into a hellscape that we can’t survive etc etc, but those are the money things off the top of my head.
:: What do you want to learn more about?