March 26, 2024

Specific things I have anxiety about

I think they’re mostly organizational and social anxieties.

  • Forgetting to pick up JB from school (Again grateful that Noemi mentioned phone alarms ages ago which gave me a tool to snap me out of my focused fugue)
  • Booking a flight for the wrong day and/or time (am vs pm or vice versa)
  • Running out of diapers for Smol Acrobat when we’re out and about (also related to are we ever getting them potty trained???)
  • Saying something really stupid and/or too true to another parent at school in a moment of unbridled honesty
  • Forgetting the stove on and causing a fire (PiC has actually forgotten it twice and I haven’t but it haunts me.)
  • Oversleeping and missing another staff meeting (this has happened once in my entire career)
  • When once-close friends stop talking to me, I wonder if I’m too much work as a friend. (at least once)
  • I can’t start or finish certain types of projects or commitments. I can’t identify in words what the pattern is but I shy away from taking on certain things because I know I can’t finish them. It’s not a rational weighing up of commitments and choosing not to overcommit. I overcommit all the time. It’s something more visceral than that.
  • The sight of dishes piled high in our sink, in between emptying and reloading the dishwasher, reminds me of how I felt when I used to see that in the family sink. And that always brings on embarrassment and regret for not being more proactively helpful to my mom when I was growing up, and particularly not in my early teen years. I had more of an excuse as a late teen. I started working full time at 17, supporting the household, so I’m less guilt-ridden over not keeping up with the dishes from 17 on. But that math struck me today. I’m still punishing myself for not being a better kid between the ages of 13-17. Why do I feel so bad that, for a short span of teen years, I wasn’t as responsible as I am now? Maybe I’m now old enough to fully empathize with how my mom must have felt as a more than full time working mom with a spouse who was (self described as) useless as a co-parent. She died when I was 27. It feels like I didn’t get enough time with her as an adult (9 years) to atone for how shitty a kid I had been (since birth I guess, I was a tough kid). Or at least I hadn’t gotten enough time with her to repair our relationship so that I didn’t feel like I had to atone for being a crap kid. Or maybe while I knew I was loved by one parent, I don’t think I ever felt liked except by a very few people. No wonder I don’t feel likeable.
  • Not being loved or part of a family beyond the little unit that PiC and I created here. The teen years, if they do that whole rebellion and hate your parents thing, will be hard.

Tweet 1: I’ll never forget telling my therapist about ppl not going above & beyond & sacrificing for me like I do for them & she said “you were taught love was w/o boundaries or consideration for oneself, so you take those things as rejection when ppl have those standards for themselves”. Tweet 2: “You sacrifice & appease not cause you want to, but cause you were told you needed to to be good sister, daughter, etc. So when people don’t do it for you, you don’t feel reciprocation or love. Boundaries don’t mean people don’t love you, or that you don’t love them.”Ate me up. Tweet 3: This was the moment I realized part of me was turning myself into a martyr that no one asked for; my trauma told me to be. & those that DID ask me to be a martyr, to appease & sacrifice myself didn’t need to be in my life. Shifted my whole perspective & gave me my power back. Tweet 4: And just as, if not more, important: it showed me I could be a loving friend, partner, daughter, sister without abandoning myself. That I wasn’t a bad person for putting myself, my desires, my needs at the forefront & communicating them

March 25, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (199)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 356: Nothing like avoiding any Sunday scaries by being so completely exhausted that you can’t even think ahead to Monday. We overdid it on the weekend and today we need a secondary weekend for recovery. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

A very small part of it was I finally had the werewithal to pick two Lakota families to help. One family is grieving the loss of a son and have been on the list since January without much help. They were in need of propane, formula, clothes, and diapers for the baby, and clothes for the surviving family. I requested to tackle the propane, formula, diapers and wipes. The second family was almost out of food, and they’re also the home where people keep dropping off dogs that need feeding and care. I put together a giant grocery shop for them while I waited for the information I needed to complete the orders.

I’m annoyed with Costco Pharmacy. They save us a bit of money but I called in a prescription on Saturday and they gave me a choice of picking it up Saturday after 2 pm or Monday after 2 pm. Every time I called for an update, it was “scheduled to be filled”. They didn’t bother to fill it until today after 2 pm. So why offer that option if it wasn’t really an option?? Huff. Thankfully I had enough brainspace to figure out the refills while we still had a week left. I wanted the Saturday pickup because weekday pickups are so much harder for us to squeeze in.

Dinner: Frozen lasagna + yesterday’s leftover meat sauce +plain pasta for Smol Acrobat because the frozen lasagna is a little too spicy for them + 4 leftover ravioli + frozen green beans. Both kids were intensely irritating about eating their green beans but they ate them all in the end and Smol Acrobat even ate all of their pasta and the meat sauce under their own steam. Yesterday the meat sauce was a big frickin’ deal. Today they kept telling me “I am eating my pwotein. Are you happppyyyy?”

Year 4, Day 357: Day 2 of weekend recovery.

My Big Task is mostly completed! I should have done this a long time ago. I knew that I should and had started the process, so I shouldn’t complain, buuuut it’s no fun and I’m going to complain. I’m finally separating my work and personal digital lives from the one computer. It’s just so much more convenient for them to be on the same machine, I could multitask so much more easily, but it’s better to keep them separate so I bought a laptop for household use last year. Several months later, I set up logins for ourselves and the kids. Another several months have now passed and now push has come to shove, changes in our systems mean it’s time for me to fully remove the personal from the professional. The process took hours: moving bookmarks over, backing up the files to our external hard drive and our cloud system to transfer them to the new laptop, and THEN to remove them completely from the work machine. HOURS. So many hours. And errors. And disconnections. And one mysterious failure where the power to the modem and our server both failed even though it was plugged into the Yeti to prevent exactly this loss of power that interrupts file transfers. I’d be tempted to say that I SHOULD have done this in stages but that wouldn’t work so well either because the point is to transfer the full contents of the hard drive at this specific moment in time and carry on working on personal stuff from that date forward entirely in the personal computer. A multi-stage transfer would mean I’d miss files that were changed in the interim period because I’m always doing something.

My personal files are all transferred to the home computer. Now I am practicing typing, the keyboard is just different enough to throw off my typing, and get in the work groove so I can make some decisions about critical software. I despise the Microsoft subscription model so I went looking for and found that we can get an older Word product key from Costco for $150 (plus a $25 Visa back). Or other places, I haven’t looked at them yet. That’s probably the software I’ll need the most.

Year 4, Day 358: Day 3, I think the PEM is finally starting to fade after 2.5 really tough days and nights. My bones still have lava for marrow but the deep and full-ton fatigue has lightened a bit to a more normal load when I’m trying to walk Sera. It’s not quite over yet, though, and this is probably where I accidentally overdo it because I think “I’m ok now!” Reminder to self: not quite yet.

I did one very slow walking set of karaokes on our morning walk and we went on one slightly longer walk midday but that’s it. I’m pacing myself!

Well that and I did the other half of a massive food prep. We got takeout yesterday so with some of my time saved, I cut up 6 lbs of meat and made the nuoc mau for the thit kho. Today the stock pot came out to play. I boiled the meat to clean it, set it to simmering for 3 hours, adding things periodically to end up with a large entree for dinner, two freezer portions for other non cooking weeks, and sent a large portion to our friends for their dinner. I’m satisfied with my performance in the kitchen for once, though I cooked it a little longer than intended and the meat is literally falling apart. Whoops! I really need more childhood recipes that can be frozen for later eating. Most of our recipes weren’t that sort of meal, they were all meant to be enjoyed fresh.

Feeling: So glad it’s not Monday anymore, so glad it’s not Thursday yet.

Year 4, Day 359: Taxes are in process. Will update is in process. Which genius thought it was a good idea to do those at the same time??

I thought my diet needed to be adjusted a bit to get to a shape I felt more comfortable in. It was a theory, attempting to lose weight has never been a thing in my life. It wasn’t about the number on the scale, I just hate(d) how my body has changed and feels after two pregnancies. The feet changing sizes is annoying, one changing to be a half size larger than the other is annoying, the stretch marks are intermittently annoying. All annoying but ultimately ignorable. My belly shape isn’t ignorable. Last month, my jeans were intensely uncomfortable after 2-3 hours. So I thought I’d have to figure this out.

I never even tried my lower carb trial since 2024 has been terrible, I didn’t want to give up one gram of carb or sugar. I did add in salads for lunch courtesy of PiC. (I’m terrible at feeding myself when it’s just me during working hours. I’m even worse at eating my vegetables these days so these were a neat fix for both problems.) What’s changed?

I’ve been going out on 5-6 walks a day with Sera since January, that’s the same.

I threw in those karaokes a few days a week recently. I noticed I’m just less hungry during the day but always hungry late at night when I’m too tired to do anything about it. I haven’t put actual effort in but it seems like maybe I’ve gone from a 4.5 month belly to a 3.5 month belly. Soft pants are still the best but the jeans aren’t awful anymore. I’d like to shed another couple inches to feel more myself but we’ll have to see if it happens with my current routine. I’m just trying to keep up with life and Sera’s 🐶 needs and I don’t have the energy to experiment with more.

Year 4, Day 360: Sera had more bloodwork. I’m crossing everything that the results come back looking better. She’s getting balky about these visits, she doesn’t want to go at all anymore. It’s a poke every time and she hates it. And I feel terrible but it’s gotta be done.

PiC usually makes time to do that during the week but couldn’t make it happen so we all went tonight. (I have a Pavlovian need for hot dogs anytime I even think about going to Costco. Anyone else?)

Somehow I managed to get through all my work and a little of my backlog today, so that was good but I was also totally wiped out by the end of the night. I should have reconsidered…well, no. It’s hard for PiC to do Costco with both kids in tow. One or the other is doable but both is just an exhausting combination, plus I needed to run a specific Costco errand as well. So it’s good that I went, I’m just knackered.

*****

I notice that some neighbors never cover their windows. Not even their front facing windows, so people can see into their home day and night. What is that about? It creeps me out on their behalf even though it’s their own privacy they’re giving up.

*****

I grew up loving Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car without ever knowing the name of the song. It came on that radio today with the wrong name: Luke Combs, and JB’s friend started singing it. That was all kinds of confusing so I had to go down the rabbithole. Oh, he’s covering the song. And then I found this and it pulled up all kinds of feelings. What a world we live in.

March 19, 2024

My kids and notes: Year 9.1

Life with JB

Turns out, if I lower my standards to just “do the chores when told without whining (much)”, they’re able to meet that. Progress!

They’ve made a new friend who is much more available than their longtime bestie and equally interested in meeting up for playdates constantly and this combination is explosive.

They have had 4 5 playdates since October, two back to back, and they’re jonesing for as many more as they can possibly manage. I recognize this impulse from when I was younger and oh so lonely and wanted desperately to have a best friend. JB has many more friends than I ever did but is naturally limited in their ability to socialize all day every single day by their fuddy dud parents who have to work and sleep and such.

It’s a weird dynamic for me. We have met the parents and even the grandparent over the past year as we run into each other regularly but we don’t know each other very well. I miss the ease of knowing and liking their longtime bestie’s family. This is new territory in a few ways. We’ve never let JB go off with anyone else’s parents driving. We’ve never let JB go to a playdate without one of us around. Recently, their new friend’s parents allowed New Friend to come play at our house solo one day, and to go on a field trip with us another day. They’ve got more kids than we do and thanked us for the invitations because New Friend doesn’t get out much. They’re quite nice about it which makes me feel like a bit of a jerk wondering but, but why do you trust us? You don’t really know us! And I don’t know you! Not really. We need to give New Friend a nickname. We’ll call them Jay. The kids are getting to an age where it’s more normal for them to go play without their parents but I don’t know what I need to be comfortable with that with new folks. We’d be fine with that sort of playdate at Longtime Bestie’s. We know their family, we know they don’t have weapons in the home, we know they have boundaries and can make the kids mind. But they’re so busy now, we have to let JB branch out and make new friends and socialize. That makes me sad about not being able to hang out with the easy established friends and anxious about having to establish new relationships and rules with new people and navigating all that. For example, Jay asked their mom in front of us: next time can JB come over to our house??? And the look on their mom’s face as she murmured “oh our house is so messy…” I quickly said “look, you’re always welcome here, and this is probably easier to play without your siblings, right? We can keep Smol Acrobat out of your hair.” Jay acknowledged the truth in that. And I sighed inside with relief that I wouldn’t have to navigate THAT for a little longer. But probably will have to figure it out sooner than later. And they’ll keep pressing the issue.

Life with Smol Acrobat

Smol Acrobat is obsessed with transit vehicles which is perfect for their auntie who is also obsessed with transit vehicles. They bond over transit and cats. They’re so obsessed with cats they walk around pretending to be a cat every day. Basically this is the cat I can have so long as I’m living with an allergic PiC.

They’re still toilet training resistant. Sigh.

They’re talking a whole lot more. They’re starting to tell us short stories about their time at daycare, and it’s really cute to finally hear their point of view.

Oh, baby, no:

“Dis a fire hydrant. I open dis and fire coming out! You need to move, it will burn you!”
“S! S is in my name!” (no, it isn’t)
“T! for zipper!”
“L! for mommy!”

Pupdate 🐶

Sera has a new Pavlovian response. Every time I take the lid off a new pot of rice, she starts drooling. She’s right, though, most of the time it’s for her.

Her bloodwork is currently the most frustrating teeter totter. One set of values goes down like we want, another set shoots up. We adjust meds, they flip flop. We’re on our fourth panel this week, and they are NOT cheap, and everything is crossed that we finally get a set of readings that show she’s responding to the medication without compromsing her liver. (Please please please.)

Evenings are tough. She’s relatively happy to do her own wandering and sleep routine while I’m working and JB is doing homework but she really doesn’t like it when I’m too mobile getting the kids to bed and all that nighttime stuff.

She follows me from room to room with an increasingly put-upon expression because she can’t lay down, not if I’m going to keep moving. More often than not, I hustle to get all my things in one place just so she can settle in for her snooze, even if it confines me to my desk or my bed. Anything not to disrupt the old and ailing dog. 😅

Precious Moments

Smol Acrobat, squirming under blanket: Can I sit wif youuuuu?
JB: Siiiiiigh. Stop it, make your own nest.
SA: *continues squirming
JB: Sttttttoooooppp squirming!
SA: Can I SIT WIF YOU!
JB: No, make your own nest. Why are you invading MY nest?
SA: But I wan’ sit NEX to you!
JB: *sigh* Do you want me to make you a nest next to mine?
SA: YES

I wondered if they were going to make it through that without intervention.

SA: Mommy, I want to read Team Spidey.
Me: Ok, go ahead.
SA: Da one wif Trac-E.
Me: … yes…. go ahead?
SA: I can’ find it.
Me: Go check your room, that’s where we read it last.
SA: *Leaves, comes back a few minutes later with a Bluey book* I will read dis instead.

Me: Can you get me the little booklet?
Smol Acrobat: *Blank stare*
Me: Can you get me the book we used yesterday?
Smol Acrobat: *Blank stare*
Me: The little book with the instructions?
*Blank stare*
Me: The one made of paper?
Smol Acrobat: OH YES! I gon get it fast-uh and fast-uh, ok? I go FAS. You stay dere! Stay WIGHT dere, ok?

SA: I’m putting my shoes away but I don’t want to put my socks away.
Me: Ok you can keep your socks on if you want to.
SA: Yah! Dat happens sometimes.

SA: Do you like potato?
Me: Yes
SA: I SAID do you like potato?
Me: I said yes!
SA: Do you hear me? I SAID DO YOU LIKE POTATO!
Me: I already answered you…!
SA: What are you saying to me? Do you like potato yes or NO?
Me: Maybe they’re talking to a ghost ….

JB: No offense to Luigi but he’s kind of a chicken. He cried soooo much when he was in the (unintelligible) lands. Mario is braver.
Me: You think Mario is actually braver or was he hiding that he was afraid?

Smol’s non sequiturs:

– I’m getting so many owanges. I’m not big, I’m smol. I’m not big anymo’!
– A monologue while playing by my feet: I have so many cards so we can go to the store. I will dwive you. I will drive you to Dr. Awin, ok? Vwoom vwoom vwoom vwoom vwoom. Ok, we here! Ok now I take you to anudder doctor. Vwoom vwoom vwoom. I take you to the nurse. I’m a doctor. I will put you down and put a shot on you. Ok waay downnn. Put a shot on you! Ok, all done. We go to our home now. I will dwive you. I have so many cards now. Wemme put dese cards away. I will p’ay different toys.

March 18, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (198)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 349: A Monday after a time change plus almost a full night of insomnia as I try to fight off Smol’s virus: things could be better.

Insomnia meant that I got to give Libby a try, though, so no ill wind or whatever that saying is. I finished a book of short stories. I don’t love the interface. I don’t hate it either. I like the principle of being able to read an ebook without using Kindle in my attempts to move away from that environment but I’ve hated Kobo’s reader app. I still use it because I’d started buying some of my collections at Kobo, but find the reading experience sticky and aggravating.

A tired Smol Acrobat was mildly cooperative about sitting down to dinner (literally, the sitting down part) but was disappointed we would not (could not) grant their request: can we have a call (A PTA meeting)? We just had one, kiddo.

Year 4, Day 350: Gloom gloom drippy gloom this morning kept everyone glued to their beds well past time. We had to hustle to get JB to school before the last bell so naturally the moods turned sour when JB couldn’t get my ok for getting breakfast at school and their homework checked in the ten minutes we had before hitting the road. Ah well. Mornings are tough.

The kids do karaokes (kar-a-ok-kahs, not the singing kar-a-oh-kee) as part of their PE warm ups and I started doing them when walking Sera. I look as silly as anything but it gets my heart rate up and, for the short distance we normally walk, that’s a small good thing. My knees don’t always agree. But.

My people avoidance continues. We had to grab takeout today and I’d forgotten to order online before like normal. I gritted my teeth and resolved to stand in line and order at the counter like normal people do. We got into the long line and I whipped out my phone and placed the order. By the time the people previously behind us in line placed their orders, ours was being packed. I feel both sheepish and vindicated. But every minute counts? I weakly defend myself since I worked until 11 pm so I could stay awake and take Sera 🐶 for her last walk of the night. And then we start all over again at 7 am. *Flop*

Year 4, Day 351: Rough night for Smol, I had to soothe them from 11-1130 pm, then again from 420-645 am. I was half conscious for the latter. Couldn’t sleep but couldn’t fully wake. Normally PiC takes all the nights but he deserves a break plus he was getting up for the 6 am registration for the kids. It’s hard getting them into the local swim classes but they’re so significantly less expensive than private that it’s worth the pain and effort.

Another set of karaokes for my morningest walk with Sera 🐶. When the kids do them, they’re going at speed, practically flying. It’s almost balletic. Not so for me, progressing up and down the street slowly and clunkily! But so far it gives me the muscles working feeling of a run without the PEM that often follows an attempt to run. Win, I think? We’ll see if the muscle aches pass in a reasonable amount of time.

A customer snarked that they’d appreciate more understanding for their busy schedule and more polite communication because they weren’t being fraudy on purpose. I caught my negative response spiral and reminded myself that just because they didn’t like being told no, doesn’t mean that I was in the wrong for being very clear about the reasons for the no since I’d already explained them in detail just a week ago. I hate how a comment like that, even unwarranted, can knock my emotional equilibrium out of whack. I’m proactively telling myself that a) Just because their feelings got hurt that I was blunt and to the point doesn’t mean I was wrong (especially since I had already explained the exact same thing last week). b) I can do other things instead of dwell on the feeling of being insulted. Managed to redirect the RSD almost entirely! New win for me!

Plus the CWC sent out an update and shared this adorable fawn they’re caring for.

tiny fawn curled up on a pink blanket with a little bottle leaning on its shoulder

Year 4, Day 352: Observing some complex feelings about money: I have been giving a chunk of cash every week to folks I “know” who ran out of money for the past few weeks or months. I don’t dwell on how much if cash flow still flows. Then I look at something like this and think “oh, like that necklace is cool, but I can’t afford that. It’d be nice if it didn’t feel like it had to be a choice between one or the other but for now, I always choose “friends having food or housing” over getting a pretty. I don’t mind, it’s just an observation.

I also have that “I haven’t given enough” feeling, “people need so much more”. That bashes up against my “we don’t have nearly enough for us to retire safely in 7 years” feeling which is constantly jostling for space again my “what about just doing the best you can for a while and attempting to achieve some balance right now which may mean taking longer to retire??” feelings. I still act allergic to the idea of pulling back the intensity of our savings, especially now when we’re doing well enough to save AND still live comfortably. It feels like taking our good fortune for granted NOT to make hay while the sun shines, y’know? Anyway. That’s just what’s bouncing around my skull.

Year 4, Day 353: It’s official, the layoffs that have been going around and around PiC’s company are going to hit his department anytime starting in two weeks from now through the end of this summer. That’s all we know and that’s doing my heartburn no good. I’ve done up a quick and dirty adjustment to our budget assuming that we lose PiC’s income, benefits, and access to the daycare. I wonder if they’re hurting for money enough to let us stay … no, probably not. The budget balances ok on just my salary if I cut out his income, all our weekly savings, and the cost of daycare. A little ironic that just yesterday I was balancing my feelings. Today it’s the budget. Life! Sure does come at you fast.

It was a hell of a busy day yesterday: meeting after meeting after meeting after crisis after meeting. While I was drowning in all of it, PiC plotted all the plans needed to make it possible for me to take a few hours to have dinner with an old friend on very little notice and I’m so grateful. The last time I went out on my own just for a fun thing was … five years ago? Seven? I honestly can’t remember. I really needed that reprieve. It was a quiet night and bolstered me enough to take the possible layoff news with more calm than I would normally have had.

Today was my day to pay the piper between the hard day yesterday and the hard news this morning. HIGH pain hit me with very little fanfare. I wrapped up in heating pads to try and combat the pain, didn’t even think to take pain meds for several hours because historically they don’t really do much, and settled in to catch up on that pile of work left from last night, catch up on laundry a little more, and try not to leak involuntary tears when my muscles screech. Oof. They burn like I ran a marathon.

March 15, 2024

Good Things Friday (264) and Link Love

1. We made it a whole two and a half weeks without a fever/viral incident! The streak ended this weekend but I’m impressed we went that long. It’s the first long stretch of the year.

Sad that the virus also hit me on the weekend as well. I was very excited to do a batch cooking session and a grocery shopping trip this weekend but couldn’t. I rage-cleaned 2/3s of the stove, all I had the energy for, but it didn’t make me feel better about ruining my plans. I’m not sure I’ll feel well enough this weekend either but that’s more the fatigue talking.

2. Sunday’s time change was more painful for me and Sera whose water has to go away by 8 pm than the kids, who both slept in for once in their lives. That was a surprise.

(more…)

March 12, 2024

Disaster stress test

I started writing this the week after the weekend’s events but ran out of time and energy to finish it as we cleaned up.

I knew that the weekend’s atmospheric river could bring us some real grief. High winds are dangerous – we had a narrow miss with our car and a lamppost in last year’s last big storm. Floods from the excess rain are dangerous, too. We keep getting just soaked a week or so ago so the soil’s not ready to absorb any more, making flooding more likely. Our own neighborhood is less likely to flood but still, being aware of the risk, we try to stay out of the way as much as we can.

We’ve been added to our emergency / disaster preparedness kid over the past several months. Our latest purchases were a set of cheapish lanterns and an expensive electric generator on Black Friday. The Yeti 3000x was on sale but I still wondered if that was an extravagant overly paranoid purchase. I stopped second-guessing this weekend. In fact, I think we need a second one!

Day 1: Our power went out several times on Sunday, so of course, hubris set in. I stopped worrying so much about a few hours of outage at a time. Then it stayed out the last time. PGE gave us a really big window for power restoration on the last one, and the affected area on the outage map showed that well over 10,000 residences were affected just in our region. This was true of the top half of CA on the outage map. That last estimate was well past the 4 hour window of safety for the perishables in the fridge, so we hauled out the Yeti and went through all the first time set up pains by lantern light while I grumpily kicking myself for not doing the test run I had intended to do before we needed to. The kids squabbled, played, and bickered while PiC and I discovered the shortcomings of our plan: the extension cord for the fridge seemed like it didn’t work, the extension cord has to be flat for the fridge to be pushed back again so it instead had to hang out obnoxiously blocking our path.

Day 2: We snuck the behemoth over to PiC’s work into an abandoned corner to charge. We knew that charging devices was permitted but felt sheepish about bringing the whole power station. We got enough power to get both freezers back down to 0 degrees and keep the fridge running overnight.

The libraries were opened for charging services too but we didn’t want to take up an outlet spot away from someone who didn’t have an alternate location to go to. All the local businesses in our local area are down. It was so weird to see all blacked out while it’s business as usual across town.

Our 6 pm power restore time was pushed AGAIN to midnight and at this point I’m skeptical we’ll get anything.

Can’t vacuum, can’t run the dishwasher, can’t wash clothes. Kinda feeling like I’m in a weird version of Vietnam on grandma’s farm where everything shuts down at sunset because there’s only generator electricity and that’s wasteful if you don’t need it.

This was probably the least worst case scenario possible, so it was perfect for a stress test. Boy, was it stressful. We made it through this ok, but the many gaps in our coverage make me uncomfortable.

What we’ve learned

We need better lanterns. The UST solar LED lantern is the best one but sadly we only bought one several years ago. I was being cautious of buying too many at first without testing them first. Too cautious, they’ve discontinued the exact one we have and love. This is the one they have now. I’m really hoping the quality of this one is just as good.

The Yeti can run the fridge off a full charge for 31 hours uninterrupted with about 40% charge left. It can probably up to 36 hours or more uninterrupted. The fridge draws a range of 8 to 420 watts variably. We can stretch that even longer if we unplug it for 2-3 hours at a time every so often. We bought an extension cord for the fridge, so that it can be plugged into the Yeti without being pulled 2 feet away from the wall, and I did another stress test. It can keep one fridge going for a full 24 hours with 9.7 hours left until it ran dry. We could stretch that out by only keeping it plugged in for 4-6 hour intervals as needed.

We need more variety in food. PiC and I both felt sluggish after the high carb Mountain House dinner the first night. Maybe that was mostly the stress that was dragging us down but it’s worth being more on top of the variety. REI had a 10% off backpacking food sale so I ordered 13 replacement Mountain House meals, a few of the same, a few new meals, to replenish our stock. This gives us variety in types of meals but not the starch theme so I’ll have to figure that out.

Edit to add: we also have the Anker Power Bank 737, and the Anker PowerCore+ 26800, plus a very old Anker PowerCore 13000. These covered our phones, lanterns and other smaller miscellaneous things that needed USB charging. We never ran them down this time. I keep them fully charged between uses just in case.

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