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
JB has been on a real joke telling kick but they have zero idea of what makes a joke funny or how to replicate joke patterns.
Why do quesadillas need so much water?
Because they hate water!
Why do sandwiches need to work so much?
So they can get killed!
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Apple.
Apple who?
Apple head!
That’s not really a joke, you’re just calling someone a name.
It is for a six year old.
Reading jokes from a book:
Why did Cinderella get kicked off the softball team?
JB: because she cheated!?
JB revels in being Smol’s favorite person
They rub it in actually. Reasons they are the favorite: Where mom and dad bat Smol’s hands away from computers, JB helps Smol touch the touchscreen. JB makes the most ridiculous faces. JB will shadowbox Smol and they will laugh so hard at this they fall on their face. And keep laughing.
A hero’s heartbreak. Smol was going through a bout of sickness AND teething. Normally JB swoops in whenever Smol is sobbing their baby heart out and two seconds of Big Sibling cuddles, rocking and soothing, produces a gummy smile and chortles. They usually sing a variation on “everyone is here, everyone loves you, Big Sib is here and I love you, momma is here and she loves you, daddy is here and he loves you, you’re safe and loved…”
This time, Smol paused for breath… Looked at me…and their face absolutely collapsed. JB was both horrified and betrayed. “I’m the Magic Person!! I make everything better! WHAT HAPPENED?!?” said their appalled face.
They brushed their hands off and gave me the baby back, singing, “Mama can handle youuuuu”.
Later we talked about how that was a sign of just how uncomfortable Smol just have been and a good lesson / reminder that we can’t make anyone feel anything different from what they’re feeling. We can’t take away their pain or their experience and we shouldn’t try. We should be there for them. We should support them and show our love, to help them get through, but they’ll ultimately have to get through on their own. (more…)
Year 2, Day 218: Huzzah!! Smol made it through the night to 6 am! A painful hour but so much better than 3 and 4 and 5. The combination of overnight diapers and a touch of sleep training the first night they woke automatically predawn without real cause, no leaks!, and we’re back to square two with their sleep. Thank goodness. Zero (1-4 wake ups every night) really sucked. Hard as it was to crawl out into the dark cold to fetch Smol, they were so HAPPY, babbling and chatting away to their little plushie friends, it was hard not to be infected by their mood.
For my part, the flu shot we got over the weekend is kicking my behind up and down the corridors. I was fatigue-aching from head to toe, not unlike a pain flare tbh, yesterday and today my whole left side aches in a different way. Like it’s inflamed and angry. Here’s hoping this is actually producing an immune response and not just torturing me.
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It feels like I blinked and here we are deep into fall and Halloween just around the corner. I’m glad that I thought ahead enough that JB and Smol already their costumes for whatever small activity we do with their little friends, and I’m trying to use this time to get equally prepared for Turkey Holiday and the winter holidays. I’d rather put in the hard work early so I can enjoy what I feel like enjoying come the time. Half the winter presents are done but there are some I forgot to put on the list or haven’t been able to come up with yet.
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Yesterday I’d tackled the problem of all the kids’ clothes in too small (to give away) and too big (store sensibly for future use). Today I tackled the problem of boxes of uncurated hand me downs from friends clearing out their old stuff and figuring JB would probably like it all. They would, they are a budding pack rat, but I went through to sort things to keep, donate, or recycle. It was spiritually freeing to clear up the post-hurricane-looking closet and floor. This was during my long childminding break from work and it was deeply satisfying to get most of the way through.
1. We got all the flu shots! We took a combination of all the ideas for JB: had them go first to “show Smol it’ll be ok”, they brought a comfort toy, and I intended to put on a song on my phone for a distraction. The song didn’t work as planned, but it worked out in the end. They started panicking a bit at the moment the needle came out but I showed them the phone screen with the video loading and the shot was done before it loaded fully. They then served as distraction for Smol and they were super proud of themselves that neither of them screamed. Just a few small tears but it was all in all not traumatic or eardrum bursting like in every other session. Yay!
2. I am very very slowly learning my way around my sewing machine so that I can teach the kids basic sewing someday. I managed to wind two bobbins today and cut out a pattern for a project I’d like to do by the end of the year. There’s something really satisfying about doing a little bit of a craft, making a bit of something instead of solely consuming. Crafting is still consuming but that’s just a part of it.
3. A reader let me know that something I wrote helped them, and that was incredibly heartwarming. I can hope that what I share helps people but I never know unless they tell me. I’m grateful it was helpful to them and I’m grateful they shared with me.
4. I tackled the many boxes of kids’ clothes that have been in a state of disarray as I searched out bigger clothes for Smol from their hand me down boxes and organized JB’s outgrown clothes into more boxes for sharing with friends and family depending on the size and kid. I put away five organized boxes, have 2 organized boxes for donation, have two more boxes to go through or just set aside, and refreshed JB’s clothing with the next size up. It feels really good to have that squared away.
5. I planted (used one gloved hand to dig around random parts of soil in our container, and dropped them in) a few sprouting potatoes and sweet potatoes. Will they grow? I don’t know! Let’s find out!
6. I showed off my cricket capture and release skills. Nice to know I can still impress PiC after 15 or so years. I assume he was impressed, anyway.
7. Medium batch cooking! I made a big pot of coconut lime chicken curry and put away 2 medium containers to freeze for later. We had the remainder for dinner. If I can make 3 meals like this on weekends, it would help resolve our dinner dilemmas at least. But one was a nice start.
Challenges this week: Brain therapy was rough. Quite a few revelations about the feelings I’ve repressed along with overwhelming feelings of grief for all our losses this year.
Every joint in my body is upset this week. I assume it’s because of the storm front that’s moved in or moving in. It hurts hurts hurts.
I’m working through a tough period at work. I hate this aspect of my job. It’s necessary and it’s necessary to do the best job I can and that turns on a lot of pressure valves that I don’t like. I’m doing my best to remind myself that no matter how I feel about it, this is just work and it’ll be fine or it won’t be and we’ll work through that too. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just my anxiety that makes me feel that it is.
I tweeted this grumpily the other day but in some ways it should be comforting:
I did the best I could / and it wasn’t good enough. / But it has to be good enough /because it was the best I could do.
I was reading this Inc article on happiness and fulfilment and they talked about relative deprivation: when “persons may feel deprived of some desirable thing relative to their own past, other persons or groups, or some other social category.” Then they gave an example of a businessowner who fell prey to “keeping up with the Joneses” in material ways and somehow that led to a massive decline in the happiness at his once thriving business in six months. I don’t know how true that story is but the idea that you should find your own happiness without comparing to others isn’t exactly new. The advice was basically to know yourself, and only compare yourself to yourself.
I thought about that in the context of my life.
I like things as much as the next person but I’m not sure that I experience that much relative deprivation that can be temporarily assuaged by spending. Sure, I could go bananapants over buying stickers that are adorable and stationery, that’s one definite weakness, along with books books and books. But my need to not feel claustrophobic among my belongings goes a long way to offsetting that strong pull.
My areas of envy are typically in my areas of weakness: intellectual. If I were to envy anyone, it might be Nicole and Maggie for being able to make good rational decisions about their kids. Or Cloud for having had the foresight to be in an area where she could enroll her kids in Spanish immersion (her eldest can read literature in Spanish. HOW. COOL. IS. THAT.) Or it might be Tanja for making the early retirement happen, while making it seem manageable, and writing and publishing TWO books (second one coming out in December!). But these are things I mostly admire about them. Money isn’t going to make them happen for me. Well, not the kind of money we’d need. Except for early retirement, having more money would help there but my point is about spending money rather than having it.
I like the good cheese, but I don’t want it all the time. Same with any other edible treat. Yummy but even I have learned moderation.
Certainly there are things we can and want to buy that have that snowball effect. Rather than being pulled to it, the snowballing repels me. The nicer car thing, for example, is a real life current example. We were mentally putting that off until it became clear it’s going to be more pain than it’s worth to delay. But the spending, the need to rearrange our parking situation (a huge pain because garages here are TINY and parking on the street is not an option), the need to figure out how to dispose of our existing car(s). All of that is so tiresome that I’m back to trying to figure out how to avoid the purchase again.
It’s probably a good thing for our finances, though less so for my psyche, that my hatred of change will lead me to look for ways to make do than to upgrade to the newest thing. I don’t WANT to have to learn how to pilot a spaceship that is a modern day car. I’m convinced that this will be me:
The first time I had to drive a car made in this decade, my shoulders were up by my ears the whole time. Hated it. Haaaaated it.
You know the thing that I MOST envy right now? This isn’t solely a pandemic thing but it most certainly is exacerbated by it. People with time. Time enough to be alone AND have to spend with other people too! Time to do one thing at a time and not have to multitask every minute of the day. Time to be creative. Time to be contemplative. Time to experiment. Time to be still. Time to be themselves and not “mom” or “manager” or “employee” or “cook” or “household manager”. I mean, I actually enjoy all those things in moderation but not when I have to be at least three of them at all times. We don’t have nearly enough money to make that kind of time happen.
I also envy people who have more choices than we have solely because they have massive shedloads of money. But since the kind of money we’re talking about is vastly more than what we’d ever see or deal with, it’s not the kind of envy that sticks. So yeah, I get green, sometimes. But thankfully not enough to feel like that has a huge impact on our lives.
Perhaps also the always ongoing Lakota project helps keep my head on more straight than it would otherwise be. If so, I’m thankful for that, too, along with the opportunity to lend a helping hand.
:: Do you have areas of relative deprivation that you struggle with or are you pretty good?
Year 2, Day 211: Smol woke up at 245 needing a diaper change, overfull and leaking diapers has been the problem this week. After a change and patting, they went back into the crib. Except that was insufficient service and they demanded my presence for another rocking on the shoulder song before they’d go to sleep peacefully. Terrorist. (Which is weird BTW, when they are being settled for a nap, they just want to be put down, they don’t want any cuddling.)
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I hit my tipping point on clutter and had to do some real tidying today: I put away all the baby veggies and cleared out JB’s now 2-3 year old Halloween, Christmas and Easter candy stash. I left a few pieces that weren’t too old. I ate their Oreos. Best by Jan 2021? Eh they were fine.
Took out an armload of recycling: plastic and paper containers that had been lingering and almost finished packing up a care package I’ve been working on for a friend’s little one. That one can go soon.
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We had my Hainan chicken and rice batch cooking failure turned porridge for dinner. It works great as a porridge so I guess we can call it a transformed meal rather than a failed one. Even Smol likes it!
Speaking of Smol, this little smudge decided they have a top tooth and a bottom tooth, they can bite food now! And they can! We learned this when they snatched a quesadilla from me and took the tiniest little chunk out of it. They glowed with pride and satisfaction.
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We’ve had another loss and I’m at a loss for what to say.
It feels like we have barely had time to cope with any one of the losses in the year. The cumulative weight of all of them together is simply too much.
1. PiC stopped by a Japanese market and picked up some astonishing California rolls that used REAL crab. The hamachi was perfect too.
2. A mutual friend has been fundraising for Kristen, a dear friend, who suffered a devastating blow financially this year after working so hard to get out of the hole. The goal needed to safely get her into a safe and stable housing situation away from her abuser was met! She’s put my financial advice into action for years and was making so much progress towards gaining her financial freedom on a limited income until this happened. Even I had to sit down when I heard the latest news and I’ve seen some financial abuse shit. She’s been a tremendous support and comfort to me these past years, sharing much of her (big and small t) trauma to help me work through therapy and (my small t) trauma. I’m so grateful that she will have a measure of peace and safety for a while.
3. Tanja’s book Wallet Activism will be out soon and I’m very excited for her (and us)! Anyone interested in an ebook giveaway?
4. @popelizbet is an attorney for DV and SA survivors and is currently fundraising to help immigrant DV survivors pay litigation costs. Help them help others? In all the time I’ve seen them online, they are good people. They do a ton of community organizing to help vulnerable people.
Challenges this week: I miss my friend. And I worry about them.
The daily slog continues to slog along without a break. We just have to hold on.
“I’m trying to teach JB to operate from a spirit of abundance.” I said to a friend. You?? My dear friend hooted. I laughed too.
Isn’t it nice to have friends who know you?
As much as I (intellectually) know we are well off, both by comparison to the rest of the world and in absolute terms even if we aren’t in the same league as our neighbors, I’m still me. My gut is still deeply rooted in the past. It’s lodged in the year 2000 when I didn’t have any financial support for college as promised, when I had to figure out how to make rent AND tuition, still protecting the Past Me that clawed her way to where we are today, inch by bloody inch.
What do I know about the spirit of abundance? Not a whole lot. I’m learning but, confession that’s not going to be a surprise to anyone who’s been here for a while: I’m still scared of being poor again. I’m still scared that it’ll all go pants. That we’ll have to start over with nothing and I won’t have it in me to do that again. I’m still scared of reliving the harsh cold last years of my mom’s life: fighting daily to get by, stressed to the gills about the bills, dying without a penny to leave behind for my kids.
As my therapist says, these are fear thoughts. I know they are. Earlier I stated unequivocally how I know we’re rich. It riled some folks when I said that it’s ridiculous not to know you’re rich when you have multi-millions in the bank. I also said that not feeling rich doesn’t make that a fact, and that if you can’t feel rich with millions, you’re deficient in something but it’s not money. I didn’t write that for clicks. If I had, I would have named names. I wrote that post because it’s both my valid observation and because I know those feelings. I have them from time to time myself! That’s how I recognize them. It’s important to remind myself, as much as anyone else it resonated with, that whatever our feelings are, we ARE rich.
The hell of it is, I can know we are rich, and also have a metric ton of fear thoughts bubbling under the surface. When I make a purchase, especially for myself, I agonize over it. I talk myself out of it, or I need a friend to talk me into it. I know $20 is ok to spend. I know $20 is ok to give. We can afford to send grieving friends flowers more than once, I know that we can help friends in need. Yet I still lie awake some nights (especially if painsomnia is already keeping me up) toting up the spending and second guessing myself. That’s going to happen, and I can’t just tell it to go away.
But maybe, aside from simply being honest with oneself, that’s another reason why it’s so important to be brutally honest about the facts of being rich. Logic can’t banish the fear but logic can pierce the fog that the fear creates. It can elbow aside the overwhelming worry that it’ll all go to pot, and point out that, as scared as my inner child is about how we were always scraping to make rent, we will probably be ok. (more…)
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.