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
1. Our locks have been sticking something awful and it just occurred to me to put a drop of oil on the key and work it in there. Just one day later and they’re working perfectly again. Small win!
Helping folks: from @prisonculture.bsky.social Trusted friends in Minneapolis tell me that this fund is supporting many people but does not have enough money. If you can give, please do: https://chuffed.org/project/167138-emergency-rent-fund-support-workers-in-minnesota.
Year 6, Day 273: How do we seriously still have a president who has giant baby tantrums over not being given the Nobel Peace Prize when what he really deserves is to spend the rest of his life in a deep dark hole, and the rest of the world has to worry about World War 3 as a result?? *Endless screaming*
Also frustrating on the micro-level of life: my throat was full of lumps this weekend. That’s a sure sign that my body’s trying its damnedest to fight off an infection and not quite managing it without doing damage to me. I’ve upped my antivirals to the “acute infection” dosage. Crossing all the things that they do the trick because our next three weekends are booked solid, I’m trying to figure out Spring Break, summer break and summer camps. It’s a bit more than my brain has capacity to manage right now. But it’s all got to be done before we have no choices.
Year 6, Day 274: I agreed to go on a little quick weekend snow adventure and I’m having pangs of regrets about the whole endeavor. House sharing. Bathroom sharing. Being in the cold much of the day. Not being in my own little Hobbit hole? Not being able to spend the weekend cleaning up the papers piling up like snowdrifts and trying on the belts I ordered for my skirts to see if they work? It’s about all I can do to make myself take deep breaths and be Zen about it.
PiC’s in charge of organizing all the cold weather gear because I have no time and this is more his deal. Plus I have never properly done any of this – as a Southern Californian born and raised, and without money to travel or do fun things, snow was a thing that happened to other people. He’s getting everyone outfitted from head to toe and that’s going to cost a pretty penny in the end. I’m not looking forward to totalling up the costs but I set ourselves a budget and he’s doing his best to stay at budget.
Year 6, Day 275: A nasty byproduct of being deemed competent in a leadership position is being voluntold to do things like presentations and business travel. I hate presentations and blergh business travel. I very tidily dodged all but one trip last year, through honest but perhaps less than chivalrous means. (Must I be chivalrous when dealing with an equal counterpart?k May I manage the same this year, or better. Zero trips, I vote for zero business trips. I want to see nothing and nobody. Just let me do my job.
In exciting news, I’ve been promoted to the 8 lb weights for my bicep curls. Did I mention that? I can’t recall. But we start with very low rep ranges (6-10) when we start a new weight level and I was enthusiastically trying to hit the high end of the range tonight when I reread my assignment and realized it said FOUR sets. Not just two. Oh. Oh that’s very different from what I was mentally prepared for. Also physically braced for. Well then. Change of plans: taking a good long break between each pair of sets to avoid stressing my wrists. My hands look ridiculous holding these 8 lb weights because they are, by comparison, enormous. It worries me a little bit that my wrists won’t bear up under the strain. If you weren’t around 20 years ago, my wrists are the original focal point for my fibromyalgia so I try to be at least a little mindful of overstressing them without being hypervigilant or babying them. It’s a weird balance.
Year 6, Day 276: ✅ I have done the donations part of my activism today. ✅ I have cut out fabric using my little graph paper pattern for two more wee bags. ✅ I’ve ordered a couple organization options for my tech bin to get the cords and cables under control. Maybe also for other uses but they will occur to me later. ✅ I’ve ordered several batches of very competitively priced supplies (manicure kits, cleaning cloths, socks, underwear) for our next Lakota community shipment. I know some friends will be bringing me their weeded out clothes next weekend so this will go into that box since weight isn’t a factor. I could have shipped this all direct but, at these prices, I wanted to vet the goods before sending them on.
Freezer and leftover dinner! November me divided a big batch of Japanese curry in two and froze it. I pulled that out midday with no plan at all. When everyone got home from their long day, we threw it on top of fettuccine and called it good. (They actually did like it, so it was indeed good.)
Year 6, Day 277: I go to bed hurting and exhausted every night, and I wake up hurting and exhausted every morning. The manner of pain varies, usually, but the cadence does not. Yet I am acutely aware that it could be so much worse. I’m in regular contact with a minimum of five migraine sufferers most days, and boy, it makes me so grateful that my brand of pain is what it is even while I’m so sad for them. I have gritted it out through so many kinds of pain, in so many muscles and bones, as long as it’s below the skull/neck. Eye pain, head pain, jaw pain and dental pain though? Absolutely not. I cannot function with those. I support them the best I can depending on our relationship but wow does it sound awful.
Well here’s some fun (not). I discovered 4 more orders at the art shop two days after the orders had been submitted – oops? I didn’t check the business email so totally missed those notifications. But as I started clicking into the details something was weird. The shipping address on all four were the same as one another. Waitaminnit. That’s the same address as the order from two weeks ago.
I logged into Big Cartel to ask them what to do about these weird transactions that seem scammy and logged into Stripe to check the transaction history to find almost 500 declined transactions since Jan 11 – that first order from two weeks ago. That’s over $3000 in attempted charges, 4 of which slipped through. At first I was trying to figure out how they were trying to scam us, now I think this is someone just using the shop as their way to flip through stolen credit cards and as a result we’re going to lose money because when we refund everything, Stripe is going to keep their fees for all the charges so we’re going to end up OWING them. It’s not a ton but the principle of it is infuriating! ARGH.
1. We found a place that baked excellent turnovers and strudels and I’m in pastry heaven. Unfortunately they are far far away but I accidentally bought enough to freeze for later so we’ll be good for a little while.
Helping folks: Aji shared some critical needs fundraisers here.
One of PiC’s parenting struggles is seeing JB start to shy away from new experiences. Their first several years of life were brazenly curious to the point of lacking self preservation, so the shift, for him, is hard to adjust to. I’m taking it a bit more philosophically. Just like they used to eat everything and love it, their tastes and preferences are undergoing some refinement. They’re allowed to have opinions and preferences as long as they’re not obnoxious (bratty or rude) about them.
We shared some hilarious parenting stories with our friends who equally struggle with their kid who is a few years ahead of us. They’re currently in a really touch patch where their kid knows everything and therefore they know nothing. When they try to share their experiences, they get the stereotypical teenage shrug of “well that’s how it was for you, but it’ll be different for me.”
Life with Smol Acrobat
We had our Winter parent teacher conference and the teacher had some surprising (but good) things to share. SmolAc’s had a terrible attitude about going to school almost every day for weeks. They never want to go. We empathize verbally but privately have worried that they have no friends and that they don’t want to go because it’s just sad solo time all day. That’s certainly how they start their mornings after dropoff every day. When we drop them off, they very much do their own thing even when old friends are around. But it didn’t quite seem to track with how they end their days – they always seem engrossed with whatever they’re doing and don’t want to leave. If they were miserable all day, I would expect them to be raring to leave when we pick them up.
Their teacher said that they do participate in all activities, from beginning to end, even if there are challenging moments. There are kids who will often quit or refuse to try so this is good. It’s with varying levels of confidence and enthusiasm but they are consistent. They apparently do better with writing at school than at home which is a mixed relief – they’re very apt to quit on me after writing one sentence. They even raise their hand in class and talk to their classmates. It sounds like they do actually seek a balance of playing with classmates and choosing to have alone time. That is a relief.
Precious Moments
SmolAc kept asking me to sleep on the (short end) sofa with them.
“But I will fall off.”
They hug my hand really tightly: I will hold you on!
JB: Smoooooool what happened with my soap?? (Translation: you screwed it up)
SmolAc, thinking about the answer that won’t get them in trouble: uhhhh. I .. don’t know?
Year 6, Day 266: Two little bits of excitement for the day: JB seems to have had an organic sale of one of their art things!
I Mcgyvered a toothbrush duct-taped to a pen to dig out a ton of the lint stuck down in the trap. Feeling Quite Accomplished. It’s not the full cleaning it needs but it’s progress, just like the toaster oven door with 1/5 of the glass clean.
This scene got me right in the gut. As a person whose parents didn’t always like her, as a person who watched grandparents treat her beloved mother with disdain and outright hatred, and as a parent who deeply loves her kids but sometimes finds them insufferable.
Year 6, Day 267: It feels like I’m being responsible and forward thinking when I scan every possible job listing (at least for the title, location, and pay range) to eyeball likely postings daily. But they all depress me. Every high level well-paying job that would roughly one to one replace this job seems to have all the same characteristics of the job I already hate (mostly corporate incompetence, also “number go up” culture). I’ve never been one to turn down a professional challenge, but having been learning how not to create more problems for myself on the personal front has changed my perspective on this career hustling moment.
Applying that awareness to this situation, job hunting feels like it’s now hypervigilance rather than proactively looking for opportunities.
Is this me being tired of the looking? Maybe. I don’t really spend all that much time looking, but it is an entirely deflating however many minutes I spend on it. There’s nothing exciting about having to look and interview and present myself a certain way and all that. It’s absolutely exhausting.
Year 6, Day 268: PF buddy Abby was asking about our retirement plans and I wanted to be hopeful but that healthcare piece remains a wild card. It seems impossible to budget for now that the US government is being run by a pack of wild murderous dingos.
Looking at those example numbers I cited before from someone who is self employed – $17k premiums and $6500 deductible which works out to $24,000 before their insurance covers anything and their situation isn’t even the worst healthcare plan out there – how does one budget for the possibility of somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k – $100k a year (for 4 people) in healthcare premiums and deductibles?? It starts to suggest you’re better off self insuring.
Except you’re not. My family took that route when I was growing up (pre ACA) and it was AWFUL. So that’s a tough needle to thread at the best of times, while we’re currently in what certainly feels like the worst of times. The unsettling part is knowing that it could get a lot worse, because that’s definitely the Republican game plan.
*****
SmolAc has been slightly under the weather with a cough and sore throat so I made them ginger garlic chicken and ginger garlic rice. They appreciated none of it. But it was really good! So it’s been my lunch for the week. Turns out you can have an easy almost Hainan chicken experience if you lower your standards some.
Year 6, Day 269: My friend challenged my thinking about what kind of savings through investing we can manage in the next two years. I have plans to squeeze out every dollar that I possibly can and put it into our investments but it still seems like it’s so far from enough. So they asked what our gains were in each of the past two years. I went back five years and was really surprised to see that with the exception of 2022, every year since 2021 has seen six digits of growth. We’re still far from my ideal number (which admittedly has been creeping up again in this, the worst timeline) but these numbers are so far from small it’s laughable. And yet, I still think “I won’t be able to save enough in the next year and a half” in case I get laid off.
Whenever the thought about a potential layoff comes up, my action-planning brain hides in a corner. I really really don’t want to have to find another job, all the job hunting notwithstanding. I really want to have enough invested that I can be let off the hook of having to work if I lose this job. But I still want to be able to work on the Lakota families project, to help out folks who need help, to afford some small luxuries like a dozen books a year or to adopt a dog when I’m ready. *wistful sigh* Wishful thinking!
Year 6, Day 270: I had my annual review today. When it was scheduled, I was awash in anxiety for a few hours. Then I got over it. I did my little notes and write up, had a friend take a look for perspective, and gave it a last cursory 2 minute brush up the next day and moved on. Therapy’s done me a world of good, I know my anxiety would have been through the roof about this six years ago.
I know that I put in an extraordinary amount of work last year. An unbelievable number of hours. And despite months of stress and friction and worry and under-resourcing battles, and shitty entitled staff battles, we eked out a win by the end of the year.
Even though the review was quite positive, it was hard for my brain. I struggled to accept the positive feedback. My brain wanted to undermine it all within 3 hours of the relief. “What if he was just saying that? what if he’s just gassing you up but doesn’t mean a damn word of it and will undermine you later??” it demands. I wanted to be mad, why can’t you let me enjoy this???? But there are reasons. I want to see that in writing for it to be real. It feels like all our massive efforts would only have been recognized under these circumstances – pulling a win out by the end of the year. It feels less than genuine because my boss was largely absent last year, like they’re only basing the judgement on the end result rather than the whole picture. Not that I’m saying that they WERE being disingenuous, it just feels like when people make that “you’re smart” comment – what exactly are you basing that on? What are your objective metrics? While I am perfectly happy writing up my people’s reviews based on their genuine efforts, for myself, my brain simultaneously demands to be recognized for being awesome (because professionally, I am) AND demands extra proof of that awesomeness. My brain is my worst enemy some days. But speaking of metrics, as we’re into the new year, I guess our bonuses (or lack thereof) will be a tangible metric.
1. A fundraiser to help support immigrant parents & families in south Minneapolis who are facing hardship—and in some cases eviction—because they can’t go to work. From Nicole Chung.
We are off a … well. The year has certainly started.
2025 Highlights in Health
Brain therapy – This year’s one big improvement was getting hold of myself when an RSD cycle was starting. The solution, silly as it sounds, was redirecting my thoughts from dwelling on the negative thing that happened. Not arguing with myself to convince myself that it wasn’t as horrible as I felt it was, I just said “yep ok that feels terrible now think about this other thing”. Apparently my RSD brain is like an infant with little to no object permanence. So long as I wave other thoughts at it, we don’t have to live in the Misery Zone.
Massage therapy: I wish I could have one every two weeks but at least my baseline pain has dipped down in the past few years to a lower level so I’m not quite as tense 100% of the time.
COVID and flu prevention: We all got vaccinated as soon as the new shots were available. I continued my maintenance antiviral regimen all year. I added the antihistamine protocol (adding cetizirine and famotidine twice a day when we traveled or were around other people).
Building strength with a trainer: I struggled to maintain consistency all year but my best week of the year was the first week of December. That week, I did a total of: 116 pushups, 68 lateral raises, 112 squats, 2.5 minutes (across multiple) of planks, 108 band pullaparts, 52 calf raises, 64 glute bridges, 92 bicep curls, 108 lying leg raises (every single one felt awful) and 76 hammer curls. It sounds like a lot but, no. That is a lot. It took an entire year to get back to the point where I managed to complete the whole week’s worth of exercises in the week! And this year’s one week of exercises is more than last year’s. After losing steam for the last three weeks, my goal is to rebuild back to this completion rate in the first three months of the year instead of only in the last week, once.
2025 Highlights in Life
Work was, again, 110% terrible. I hate corporations so much. I hate working for one even more. (Though I might well hate being unemployed by one even more than that.) We may have benefits and better pay but it comes at such a high cost to life balance. I’ve worked twice as many hours as any one person should and that stinks.
Parenting has felt tough. There have been small bright spots with the kids that I try to appreciate fully as a bulwark against the grief and sadness during what feels the endless slog of conflicts. I try to remember that overall, the kids are fairly decent humans-in-training. It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees when we’re deep in it but I hope I can always pull back and say that they are good people.
A friend encouraged me to track my reading, for all my love of spreadsheets, I have never felt the need to do this but decided to go ahead and do so anyway just for fun. According to my totally shoddy bookkeeping which likely leaves out quite a few books, I have read at least 105 books this year. I tend not to remember to record re-reads but I think they count and I do a lot of rereading when stressed. Oh, I just noticed that Libby has a timeline thing and shows how many books I’ve read in past years. At least half of my reading was in Kindle, there’s some Kindle overlap in these numbers, but this excludes free or purchased books: 2018, 189; 2019, 137; 2020, 141; 2021, 115; 2022, 113; 2023, 101; 2024, 47. 2024 was hellish in ways that kept me from reading like normal. 2025 wasn’t better, it was just a different bad, in ways that didn’t prevent me reading.
2025 Highlights in Money
We had two full time incomes and did our best to supplement that with little extras, like my $10 in sales of journals and tees.
We ended 2025 with twice as much cash as we started the year with. This was intentional: I plan to max out my 401k as quickly as I can in Q1 2026. Again because my pessimism says: will you even make it through half the year? Who knows! We need that extra cash for cash flow during those high-contribution months.
Our net worth climbed steadily, incrementally.
I invested in my very own 401K for a second year.
I helped JB build their business a little bit more.
The Lakota families project helped so many people.
Financial Checklist for 2026
I need to get our complete set of the documents to trusted friends. It took all of last year to collect copies of everyone’s vital documents and I had to settle for good photocopies for one set. It’s hard to tell whether we could even get official copies of that set given the office doesn’t seem to answer emails or any other communications. I MEANT to send the envelope home with one friend when they were in town but completely forgot. They’ll probably be out here again before I remember to get it in the mail.
Thoughts for 2026
Both of us continue to worry about our job stability in 2026. Mine has to do with completely unrealistic corporate expectations: last year was awful, this year’s worse. PiC’s worried because his employer’s just cutting people left and right and it came awfully close to him in 2025. We’re not ready to retire financially (the damn healthcare problem), though I have the WORST senioritis. If I knew we had a really solid severance, I might be willing to lean hard in that direction. But realistically, we’re hoping that, worst case scenario, we both make it to the end of 2026 employed. That gets us to the end of daycare and the start of kindergarten. I’ll run the numbers on where we should be in terms of emergency cash and investments by then. I don’t know what my company’s layoff calculation is but if PiC’s employer doesn’t change theirs, his would be a reasonably generous severance.
At the same time, we hope to expand JB’s horizons. Whether it’s picking up an instrument or a new sport, or both, we’re thinking of how to budget both the time and money for that. We have floated some ideas to SmolAc as well to offer them the chances to pick either an instrument to explore or a sport but they’re awfully recalcitrant about all ideas. We didn’t force JB into any of their activities, so I hope a little time will allow SmolAc to feel the desire to join something too.
Our money
Same goal: Save more, invest more, give more. Achieve FI in ??? years. Mostly I’ve stopped filling out the FI calculators. It’s too depressing.
(Again) All our expenses will go up next year. The increases are substantial enough that we may start losing ground financially. We can’t expect COL salary increases to keep pace with the expenses, nor can we expect the stock market to continue to perform like it did this year. (Though a friend points out that it usually DOES). I’m looking into what we can do to mitigate rising costs.
Little life things
My monthly call list fell apart mid-year when things at work got extra bad.
Household project: Declutter, donate, organize. ✔️ We’re going for Year 3. I bought myself a third round of Sterilite latching storage boxes for holiday gift transport, for storing next size up clothing for the kids, and organizing the garage better. The garage is looking pretty good all things considered.
No hard pants! Was a time when I lived in jeans but I migrated into my sweats in the pregnancy of SmolAc and only recently relented to wear non-sweats for a work thing once this year. This year however, I’ve acquired a couple pairs of fleece lined joggers and leggings for when the sweats just aren’t warm enough in this frigid house. I was gifted some casual soft linen/cotton pants that will double very well as casual business wear if I’m forced into that nonsense again this year. I even picked up some wide belts to better put together an outfit with my Maya Kern skirts. I might be as well-equipped as I have ever been to avoid wearing hard pants for a full year. Fingers crossed!
Personal project: Learning to sew very basic things has been a mix of fun and frustrating, but ultimately satisfying after I manage to complete a thing. I was working on drawstring bags last year. This year I moved on to cute little Japanese knot bags that I’ll make in various sizes once I feel like I’ve got the hang of them. Maybe sell them with JB at a craft fair if/when we have one next year. I also made a pile of tablecloths in prints that amused me instead of paying roughly the equivalent price for tablecloths I didn’t really care for.
The Lakota Giving project continues, thankfully. I worried that 2025 would be significantly worse than 2024, which was much harder than 2023. A few regular contributors have dropped off but we have managed to help more than half a dozen families directly each year along with masses of community donations.
