July 23, 2021
Good Things Friday (126) and Link Love
1. Neither good or bad: time is so WEIRDLY elastic. Saturday flew by way way way too fast. Sunday was much less disappeary.
Challenges this week: technology. ARGH.
family
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
Read MoreJuly 20, 2021
My kids and notes from Year 6.6
Growth
How is this child about 3/5 my height????
My parenting growth: I caught myself saying “see? Wasn’t that much easier than you made it out to be??” to Smol and stopped before I committed to it. It reminded me of all the similar sounding comments people make when you come out of your shell and try something, which just makes me never want to try again. I changed it to “well, look at that. I’m glad you tried it!”
Responsibility
JB is on this kick where they are trying to stay up until midnight. WHY. (“Because I’m a vampire!” Great. Just great.) I guess it doesn’t matter much during the summer, and it’s fine if it’s just a phase, but I definitely don’t want to be dealing with this when school starts up again. I did enjoy siccing a happy Smol on their sleeping sibling early one morning though. Revenge for all those early morning wake ups when they divebombed me! Muahahahah.
*****
Being back in the real world is hard. We walked through an unexpected craft fair, and JB saw some really cool things. This would have been fine but their friend also saw the really cool things and their parents bought some for them. We did not. JB was JEALOUS. AND MAD. I sympathized but we weren’t paying $50+ for an unbudgeted impulse buy. We’ve had many talks about picking and choosing where we spend our money, and accepting that we’re going to feel disappointed from time to time while we focus on our bigger goals, and they do remember those principles. But we’re all going to learn to live with feeling the actual disappointment as we actually experience this in real life.
They were able to set it aside and go play with their friend but I know we’ll have a lot more of these kinds of talks and incidents as we ease back into being around other people and seeing what other kids and parents do that we don’t do.
July 19, 2021
Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (59)
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 120: PiC graciously took the 6 am wake up period with Smol, so I took the 8:30 am-12 pm shift with the kids. JB had tutoring for a big block of that time so it was me and Smol for most of that time. JB was predictably furious that Smol had to go down for their nap by the time their lesson was done, though, so I soothed their grudge with letting them do the bedtime routine of reading and singing. Their mood visibly improved with the wrangling of a sleepy, adoring, but also very grumpy (because sleepy) Smol Acrobat. After we completed the nap putdown, JB danced out to tell PiC: It’s your turn with the kids! Clearly, we have been doing the swappity-de-do for a while.
PiC took the next four hours after that and then we split the remaining evening chores.
*****
At lunch (I was working) JB asked PiC to text me: “Mommy I hope you don’t have too much work to do.”
Me too, kiddo. But I do.
Happily they decided to unload the entire dishwasher on their own though their primary assignment is only to do the utensils. That was nice.
*****
Money things, the coffeemaker: PiC’s french press was dropped and shattered so I had to order an immediate replacement. He says he’s not addicted to coffee but tell him he’s not going to have a coffeemaker for a day and see what happens, I dare you! 😉
Money things, my mouse: I have been fighting with my mouse for weeks and weeks and weeks. It keeps disconnecting. I finally went through all my old peripherals in the Computer Box and found one that does work but I hate the scrolling action on it. I’ve already adjusted the responsiveness up as far as it’ll go in the settings but it still lags and I hate it. I use it 8 hours a day, but am having trouble justifying the purchase of a new mouse just because I don’t like it. But then again it’s a lot of hours of use a day…. JB has been wanting to use a mouse with their set up but I was going to give them my Oldest Mouse that is much smaller and would fit their hand better. If I do that, I could retire this Second Oldest as a back up for them.
July 16, 2021
Good Things Friday (125) and Link Love
1. I just saw an ad for Fidelity saying they would help someone planning for retirement consider “different scenarios, like saving more each month.”
That was the example. Saving more each month. I had to laugh. (Then Donna made the good point that what’s basic to us isn’t even on the radar for someone who doesn’t live and breathe money talk.)
2. Turns out the answer to the question of “what do you do if you have some free time?” is: dive into tax and retirement planning and blogging and watching Leverage: Redemption. I would like more free time please. I need a nap.
3. In an unexpected twist, since my maternity leave earlier this year was medically indicated after the first 8 weeks of CA SDI ran out, I think the rest of my leave was paid for through SDI as well instead of the Paid Family Leave program. If I’m right, then I think perhaps that all the state funded income for my maternity leave won’t be taxable. I hope I hope I hope.
4. PiC has finally hopped aboard my container garden train, full steam ahead! By which I mean, our living circumstances are finally such that he thinks it’ll work, and we have friends with great gardening experience telling us potatoes are dead easy to grow, and we’ve experienced the fun of digging up potatoes. We bought a couple large grow bags, soil and fertilizer, and we’re gonna do it! This is a hobby, though we’re absolutely eating whatever we grow, because otherwise these are the most expensive potatoes ever. I’m keeping this project very very small because despite my desire to Grow All The Things!!!! we don’t have the time to pay attention to or research a proper garden and I do not want to waste money starting up crops that are just going to die of neglect and ignorance.
5. Leverage: Redemption Leverage: Redemption Leverage: Redemption!!
I tell you what, I screamed internally when I found out they were coming back. Absolutely giddy. I adored the first run and I was so thrilled they were bringing the characters back. Like old TV friends. I always want more story with characters I love and for once, I’m getting it.
Challenges this week: We’re planning to travel quite some way for the first time in almost two years and it’s a big undertaking.
Technology is fighting with me. Why can’t it just do as it’s told??
July 13, 2021
Visceral memories
Contemplating the smooth surface of a two year old foam mattress transported me back to the days of my aged spring mattress that had been flipped and turned so many times there was no side that didn’t have deep permanent grooves. I lived with that old one so long I never once considered it might be one major cause of my persistent back pain.
Man, I sank into that soft mattress for all the wrong reasons. It was nothing like the luxurious pillowy softness of pillow top mattresses at fancy hotels, it was the boneless sagging of a decrepit structure. Such a big difference. I’m so grateful for good mattresses now.
Seeing little baby eyes peering through the crib slats, and Sera curled up nearby waiting for us to take her out, flashes me back to the older, bigger dog that used to be there. All the times Seamus took up the guard position at the bedroom door when JB was crying in their crib, fighting their naptime so many years ago. His head canted to one side, and nestled on his front paws. He settled in for however long it took to show them how to sleep, and protecting them in the meantime.
A well-meaning friend’s repeated jokes about how my priorities (being ultra responsible, for example) influenced their choice not to offer a helping hand dunks me back into the vat of all the times I felt unloved and unwanted and not a priority. To take the sting away, I’d tell myself that I wasn’t important, that I didn’t deserve anything, that I don’t matter enough. I’m trying not to do that again. It reminds me of all the times I see people remind us on Twitter: check on your “strong” friends. Too often “strong” is misunderstood as “unbreakable” and nothing could be further from the truth.
The mention of a friend’s parent’s decline into dementia grips my throat and turns my stomach. I remember this.
When I’m bone tired and simply cannot exist any longer, I roll up into a blanket burrito. This now-tatty blanket was gifted to me when my mom passed and it still keeps me warm and cozy today. It was a moment in time when I felt like my pain was cared for.
:: What brings on a strong memory for you?
July 12, 2021
Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (58)
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 113: Well, I forgot today was Monday 16 times even though I put in about 6 hours of work today. Holiday weekends always throw me for a loop. We had a conference call lunch with family for funsies so that was one bit of relaxing we did, and then we also took everyone for a looooong walk later in the afternoon. I needed to try to walk off some back aches and that didn’t quite work as planned but it was still good to stretch my legs. I did not get out for a walk more than twice last week. That’s pretty bad and it was even more obvious by how much I huffed and puffed my way back up the hill.
*****
Some days I am starting to see a tiny bit of the more normal parent me peek out. Sometimes I have patience again, kind of like before the pandemic. Not a lot, and not for long but I thought that part of me had died, crawled out of the grave, gotten bludgeoned, and died again.
Year 2, Day 114: For once, my decision to go to bed instead of working late the night before worked out. Usually I lay there futilely trying to fall asleep, get frustrated, and then feel like it was all a wasted effort by 2 or 3 am.
This time, I still didn’t fall asleep when I wanted to but I did get enough rest that after Smol Acrobat started their 6 am round of thumping, babbling, and hawk cries, I was just about able to get up and prep their bottle. PiC changed and fed them while I took care of my toilette, and then he passed out with the baby happily remonstrating next to his prone body. Smol and I hung out for the next hour and a half, playing, walking the dog, eating again, me trying to work a little bit in two minute spurts.
*****
I’m covering for people on the team being out again this week, this is the fourth or fifth time in five weeks, because everyone’s doing some kind of travel now that CA is opened up again. I’m DROWNING in work and my brain can hardly keep up. Well, it will. But I hate this feeling of being behind on everything.
*****
We made a rookie mistake and miscalculated both how long it would take us to run two errands and underestimated how much formula to bring with us for those errands for Smol. So underfed and tired Smol was very unhappy. We skipped their last nap and put them straight to bed after feeding but it was still too little too late, they were up multiple times in the night just miserable. Sigh.
Year 2, Day 115: My body’s all out of whack this week for other reasons but that lack of sleep really loosens up my joints. This is not great. On top of a doubled workload, I also need to schedule two sets of activities and lessons for JB for the rest of the month so at some point. One teacher won’t be available for weekly lessons anymore and the other one isn’t teaching anymore so I have to pick a replacement. I’ve got to find the time for that. Thank goodness PiC is on lunch prep today.
My pain was so high by the end of the day, between sleep-deprivation fatigue, stress multiplying my aches, and overdoing the walk in the afternoon that when I got up from bed, having forgotten my bedside water, I could only hobble. Hello, geriatric me.
Year 2, Day 116: We were supposed to do pizza night last night! We forgot. My brain is maxed out. All I could think this morning was I hate work, I want to retire.
I ran a load of laundry last night, the dishwasher this morning, and the robot vacuum this afternoon. Thank goodness for robot helpers! JB suffered a great disappointment when an Auntie had to cancel their call this afternoon, they instead spent their afternoon doing a consolation puzzle (100-200 piece puzzles are too easy for them now, we need to level up. What’s next, 300?), reading, racing on NitroType, and watching the Hello Kitty and Friends Adventure shorts that I had picked out for their viewing. I really shouldn’t share so much Hello Kitty stuff with JB. Passing along my personal obsession to the next generation is Not Good for our pocketbooks. (But it’s so CUTE.)
Year 2, Day 117: Thinking of my CPA and how she still owes me a few amendments that would result in refunds and how I can’t pay her until she tells me how much I owe. I’d like to pay her. I already sent a reminder saying I’d like to pay her, please tell me how much but she just said she would get back to me. Still waiting….
*****
Smol woke up, and laid back down to nap several times over the course of an hour. I can’t tell if I should count that as awake time or asleep time for the purpose of calculating their next nap time!
*****
We’re starting to see school related information and it’s giving me whiplash. The CDC says vaccinated teachers and students don’t need to mask. I want to know why this country thinks I’ll believe anyone who is maskless without solid proof of vaccination given the behaviors we’ve seen to date. The tantrums, the lying, the people who spoiled vaccines, the person who was caught selling blank vaccine cards. And even if I wasn’t completely mistrustful of the general public, kids under 12 still can’t be vaccinated so are we going to only expect them to mask? Personally, though we’re both vaccinated, PiC and I stay masked to keep JB company. They have been really good about it but I know it helps with their compliance to have us masked. Our friends with under-12 do the same.
*****
We’ve been having medium range planning conversations about the next car. We need to decide 1. what we need 2. when we need it and 3. when what we need will be available. Ideally this purchase will be somewhere 2-5 years down the line, if we can push it out that far, because I want to save for this incrementally over a long time. Also because we aren’t convinced the technology is mature enough for what we’re looking for. We don’t want to get into a new tech money and time pit.
He’s done some initial research and for the size of hybrid vehicle we need for four humans plus an additional guest at times, a large dog, and luggage, we’re looking at $30-50k. That’s a staggering sum. The high end is almost laughable and it’s really truly unlikely we’d ever be willing to make that happen. That’s huge. HUGE. It’s far too large a proportion of our income.
Heck, the low end of the range is the total cost of what I’ve paid for the two cars I’ve purchased for myself in the past twenty years: one new and one used. I know that’s a meaningless stat but it’s still true. My first car served me well until I had to let my dad keep it ten years ago. I eventually gave it up permanently in the Going No Contact process. My second car is over 15 years old and I fully expected to hit 20 years in it. I’m not sure if it’ll be my car or the dog car that gets replaced but they’re both quite old and the maintenance costs are real.
:: How old are your vehicles? Do you have timelines for replacing them?
July 9, 2021
Good Things Friday (124) and Link Love
1. PiC pulled together a lot of meals seemingly out of the ether this week. I’m so grateful.
2. He was able to take on more of the meal prep because his company declared a no meeting week and OMG can they please have more of those??
3. On a totally unscheduled day, after a few instructions on things to do (reading, Spanish, typing practice, short videos), and a few suggestions for fun things that they passed on, JB kept themselves occupied for hours with a self motivated project. That was really nice.
Challenges this week: Work tripled this week as people who generate work for us seemingly all worked on the holiday weekend and some of the people who do the work were unavailable. I told PiC on Thursday that I was on a razor’s edge about to absolutely lose it.
A family friend had a heart attack. They seem like they will be ok but it was of course very worrisome.