About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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August 24, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 7, Day 111: Not to be all about the confirmation bias but I’ve been harboring a not-at-all-secret fear that this layoff will be as bad or worse than the last one. In length at least if not misery. My therapist is being all hope and sunshine about how this represents an opportunity. I’m not denying that it could be that, eventually. I’m not denying that I needed to leave this job and that it would have been unbelievably hard for me to leave to take a real break like I needed to without a layoff. I’m even doing my best to consciously be open to optimism and to making the most of this time so that it’s not all stress and doom. But it’s way too soon to feel hopeful – especially now before a job search begins in earnest. Mostly the open mind and keeping busy, between kids scheduling, chores and new crafts, has been working to keep me out of the dumps this month. And it’s been nice to discover new things while the clock ticks down on the “I still have an income” status.
The worry is still ever-presently lurking in my daily subconsciousness, though, and a recent discussion of how long some folks have been job-hunting (several months to a year and still counting) brought it bubbling back up to the surface. I know we can hang for a year, I’ve been doing the more detailed math, but then what? What’s my Phase 2 plan if this goes longer than a year? 18 months? 24 months??
Sigh. As I half-joked to my coworker, I have until PiC gets laid off, then I REALLY have to get a job. That’s not a time so much as a floating limit. I continue to hope that sometime in Months 6-10, I discover a hidden talent of something I actually want to do, physically CAN do and do well, and is lucrative. Go on universe, show me what good stuff you can come up with.
Year 7, Day 112: Hm. PiC’s employer is changing retirement plan providers from Fidelity to Empower. I’ve never heard of Empower before but they claim to be the second largest retirement plan recordkeeper in the US. Materially, we’ll see a decrease in the annual admin fee from $36 to $19. I don’t see any other differences that matter to us – the plans and funds available to us all remain the same. I won’t expend more brainpower on this until I really have nothing better to do since there’s nothing I can do about it but have an opinion (or not).
A funny coincidence: I have been on a cleaning binge and, last night, found one of the kids’ old sports uniforms that was never worn tucked in a tote bag. That made me sigh. It’s been listed on Poshmark for weeks without any interest, I wonder if I need to do something to bump it a little… then I forgot all about it. Today, I got a notification that there was a counteroffer on that very listed item. Counter? Where was the first offer? I opened the app to see that the little automation they had that sends an offer to anyone who likes an item had been triggered by a like, the buyer immediately countered the lower offer, and then accepted the app’s counter offer. Sold! That’s a pretty easy automation (if I were coding it with my dev, I’d describe it as: if an item is liked, send an offer with Price-$3) and effective too, it seems. I’ve packaged it up and it’s ready to go.
Year 7, Day 113: After four weeks of positively dismal workouts or weeks without working out at all for various reasons, I’m finally doing my workouts this week as written and may actually (knock salt, throw salt, all the things) get through more than half of them for the first time in over a month. It’s been demoralizing how many weeks I’d missed because I couldn’t squeeze it in and it’s clear that stamina has gone walkabout without me. But back on the metaphorical horse I go. I’d be more enthused if it was a real horse.
I’ve mostly got a pharmacy organization system down for travel but Hawaii Planner had me contemplating if it’s the best that it could be. I have a set of meds that I have to take daily – that’s easy and goes in the 7-day am/pm medication organizer. But there’s also a set of meds that I take as needed in the evenings and those are dependent on how I feel so the fixed week organizer doesn’t work for that.
Year 7, Day 114: Ooh I’m mad at Kobo. I have spent hours painstakingly organizing my Seanan McGuire short stories that I’d uploaded manually to the app into the right collections. Today, I opened the app and it ambushed me with an update and migration that I didn’t agree to and in doing so, it changed the author name for all the manually uploaded stories to Unread and deleted all the collection tags. WTAF!! I don’t have the mental energy to fix this right now.
Year 7, Day 115: We’ve tried really hard to get the kids back on an early rising schedule before school starts. It’s painful and largely unsuccessful. They will get up early on the day of, there’s no way to fake the adrenaline from when school actually starts ahead of The Day. Admittedly I’m also dragging from fatigue so much that without the true pressure, the dry runs have been dry fumble stumbles. It’s very irritating because best intentions! But no, says the body.
All that to say, they did finally get up early as needed, just in time. And now we have to be really strict about bedtimes because their bodies need a lot of sleep normally, which is why they tend to sleep in (mostly JB but SmolAc’s also been laying abed a little later than their norm) and if they’re cutting it short at the morning end, we have to make it up at the night end.
August 21, 2026
1. I cooked dinner three times this week! I haven’t been able to do that in years.
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August 17, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 7, Day 104: I’m doing the math for next week and with the kindergarten class letting out at 12:30 for a month, I’m only going to have roughly 4 hours of kid-free time per weekday once school starts. After that month, they add one hour.
That’s a mere half of the solo silent hours I need to stay sane generally. š
And if PiC chooses to flex work more, to help out with kid stuff, that further cuts down on my solo silent time. It’ll help with the kid errands but I’m going to struggle with so little quiet time to recharge.
(Cautiously) I think I’ve finally kicked the most recent set of viruses and my mouth has also healed from the three canker sores that sprouted around the same time (could have been related). Rude, body, very rude. But finally I can take a bite of food and not be in pain all the way until the food gets past the esophagus! š
Year 7, Day 105: Both in an attempt to keep my mind busy, and to stack a few more bricks of cash against the rapidly approaching last day, I’ve been working a number of deals these past few weeks.
We opened Wells Fargo accounts for the bonus and reaped $800 for both. I’m working the Chase Ink Business card bonus now that all the approval rigamarole is done with. I saved T-Mobile Tuesday deals four weeks in a row on both our phones to earn a $5 gift card for each of us.
I’ve submitted all FSA receipts to date and my reimbursements for work expenses have been paid so I’m very nearly done with all the work related things I’ll need to wrap up.
I’m kinda drawing a blank on what I can be doing next so best to focus on hitting the minimum on the Chase card in a smart way before picking up another money project.
Year 7, Day 106: I’m using the library’s MakerSpace a lot this month: learning how to use the 3D printer, using their sewing machine while mine is in the shop, etc. I’m hoping to learn how to use their Cricut soon but that has to wait until my hands are under control. They’ve been so swollen this week that I’m up a full ring size and it’s been hard to do basic things like bend my fingers. This is like a reversion to my hands 30 years ago when my fibro first started.
We’re borrowing a lot more books and DVDs these days. Well, I am. PiC has always kept the kids stocked to the borrowing limit but we’ve only just started finding shows that we can all enjoy that isn’t just Bluey. Right now, it’s Robotech which I spotted fortuitously. We’ve finished the Mscross Saga, and have the Masters Saga and The New Generation (10? Discs). Then we’ll be on the hunt for something else. Remember a few months or so ago, SmolAc hated everything we screened because they decided all antagonists were bad and made the show bad. It’s made finding something to watch a lot more challenging.
I’d like to try Doctor Who but maybe that’s only possible if we can get the really old doctors. My theory is that the fighting in Robotech is only acceptable (to SmolAc) because it’s robots and very old graphics/ technology. Perhaps very old Doctor Who might maybe slide under their radar? If not, maybe it’s time for anime – One Piece might be acceptable. Open to suggestions for favorite anime appropriate for a 5+ year old and the rest of us!
Year 7, Day 107: My little Janome is home! It’s been serviced for $150 and is home home home. I’m hoping that the service means I won’t run into tension issues with the thread seizing up under the sewing plate again any time soon. I’ve got several bags in various stages of completion, I’d love to finish them off.
Today is a SmolAc and me day so we’ve planned for them to do some coloring, some drawing, and then we’re going to pick up our neighbor and their two big dogs for a session of ball throwing. It’ll be good for everyone. I desperately need dog time, SmolAc has been more and more interested in dogs, the dogs need the exercise, and our neighbor kid is bored so we’ll be rescuing them for a little while.
Year 7, Day 108: A discussion about blood donations in a Discord led to a mention of plasma donations (paid) and that roused my curiosity so I did a bit of searching. It looks like you can make a decent amount of money a month doing 5-8 donations but none of the many locations they have in California, across three companies, are anywhere near us. Darn. Not that I know if I COULD donate plasma but September is for learning new things!
Had an online chat with Comcast because they are no longer showing the relevant details of the promotional rate I wangled out of their last chat agent AND they double charged me. It looks like the double charge will be offset by next month’s billing negative $1 but I still don’t like how the site no longer shows the correct promotional rate with discount AND when the discount ends. It SHOULD be $50/month for 60 months, but their site is just blithely showing a $100 monthly rate. The chat agent kept telling me to “trust me”, that the rate is correct in the system but a) I don’t and b) there’s no reason Comcast itself would ever take “trust me” instead of cold hard proof of the agreement. So for now, I have to settle for screenshots of the chat agent assuring me that my monthly rate is $50. Doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth but if this buys me peace for another 4.5 years on the internet front, that is good enough.
August 14, 2026
I learned how to use the library 3-D printer and successfully printed 2 train track parts! That was very satisfying, after several false starts. I even got to change out the cartridge to use the yellow filament that the kids requested for this first test run.
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August 12, 2026
Life with JB
Middle school is coming up like a freight train and it’s all we can do to keep just ahead of the cowcatcher. I’ve got the bell schedule written down and I’m working out what that means for my presumptions about my schedule. I’ll be doing an early pickup for kindergarten, and then a couple hours later doing a second pickup after middle school lets out. PiC has been organizing the walking routes for the kids and setting up walking buddies for JB. I’m not ready for any of it, nor are they, but we’ll have to ride it out no matter how we feel.
Life with Smol Acrobat
SmolAc has started eating more foods and whining less about it in recent months. They used to hate all forms of potatoes that aren’t french fries; they couldn’t handle any hint of spice; even pizza wasn’t a sure thing with them some days.
This month they willingly enjoyed a meal that they would have scorned 3 months ago: Costco tritip (the very occasional treat), a baked potatoes and roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli. 3 months ago, they would only have eaten the broccoli and whined about the rest, this month they are all of it and said it was good! They’re willing to test the seasoned and crusted tilapia, where they wouldn’t have even touched it before. It’s still too spicy for them but they keep coming back to try it now and again.
This does mean that it’s getting more expensive to feed the family. We used to get by on fish night with 3 tilapia and 2 salmon fillets. Now I think we need 6-7 total fillets for everyone to be full. It’s getting to be more than the toaster oven can handle in one go so I’ll have to plan a little more in advance. Fish nights are the easiest because prep is so fast. Someday I should learn to roast whole fish properly, they feed more people.
Pupdate
My internal debate: I don’t know if it would be responsible or irresponsible to adopt a dog while I’m out of work (financially) but when else am I going to have this much time to transition and train a newbie?
I’ve been gently perusing the available dogs at local rescues and telling myself “not before November” as a rough guideline for when we’d hopefully have settled into a new school routine for both kids and would then have the attention to pay to a newcomer. SmolAc has been asking for a dog, and it breaks my heart all over again because most recently they asked PiC: but aren’t Seamus and Sera coming back?
Have they just been quietly waiting for their dogs to come back all this time?
It might be unhelpful that I’ve kept their bed at the foot of ours all this time, I couldn’t bear to put it away, nor did I put away their bowl tray.
Precious Moments
Uncle: This costs $55. Did you save your money for this?
SmolAc: No.
Uncle: Are you going to start?
SmolAc, very solemnly: No, I only have one dollar. I cannot spend my one dollar.
*****
SmolAc Explains the Rules: you can only do tumble if you can tumble very goodly and if you can tumble very goodly then you can do backward tumble.
*****
SmolAc: Mommy, this doesn’t say Start!
Me: It does, it says “Empieza aqui!” That means Start Here in Spanish.
SmolAc: It does!? What does this say?
Me: Completado! It means Completed!
SmolAc: Oh, so it says start AND finish. Wow, you DO know a lot.
August 10, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 7, Day 97: It’s possible that mistakes were made. There was a free Gundum build and take workshop. I power walked the kids to it and we each received kits. Now they are really enjoying building little Gundam robots. SmolAc is fairly well obsessed. This is an expensive hobby! Perhaps we don’t need additional expensive hobbies right now? Buuuuut, counterpoint, despite the occasional frustrating bits where they give you microscopic stickers or plastic bits to attach to other bits, it IS a lot of fun. Which is why I wanted to go in the first place. It’s not as straightforward as LEGO, but it’s fun to have a little robot model at the end. I’ll look into getting a few more inexpensive sets. For motivation.
Year 7, Day 98: I’m resenting the hell out of the physical experience of being a woman in her mid-40s. I’m constantly sweating in temps that used to be perfectly fine, literally dripping sweat and doing that cliched mopping of my forehead. I’m a lumpy potato and despite my best efforts, nothing is comfortable. Pants, tees, skirts, nothing. Grumpy.
Also, it’s come to my attention that my older rings cannot fit my super swollen fingers anymore. They used to go through semi-regular swelling / not-swelling cycles. They’re now stuck in the swollen state.
I now have more rings I can’t wear than I can: my pretty little ring from my teen years (I only had the one), engagement ring, and two hand me down / heirloom (? I can’t tell what it’s called when an elder friend gives me stuff from their collection that they don’t use anymore). I don’t own a lot of rings but the ones I do are precious to me and this makes me sad.
Year 7, Day 99: Suddenly I have three families in my life expecting all at the same time. It’ll be their, third, second, and first, respectively, which makes part of my brain chuckle. I am a little overwhelmed thinking of all the (book and clothes) gifts I’ll need to prep. But I got to cuddle a newborn this week and omigosh that was so healing. I adore babies. Fresh little baby loaves, so tiny and squishy and cuddly and, in this case, hardly screamy at all.
I’m mentally putting together a list of all the remaining baby stuff that I should send to the expecting mothers. I’ve sent the (hopefully effective anti-nausea) ginger beer out to one of them.
SmolAc took ill this week again and I’m nursing them along again. Feels like we just did this cycle. (We did.)
Year 7, Day 100: I HAVE FINALLY DONE IT. I’ve found a shampoo and conditioner that doesn’t set off my brain’s ick! I’m putting it away for now, I’ll need to use up the other experiments first (unless I give them to everyone else whose noses are not at all sensitive) and then I can settle into using the inoffensive Dove pairing. šš
Also my sewing machine has gone into the shop for a tuneup and diagnostic ($150+). It’s started doing that KERTHUNK and then buzzzzzz instead of sewing again. The good thing is they’re not nearly as far away from us as the shop that it came from, so I won’t have to drive 100 miles round trip to get it back. I will have to drive 60 instead. šµāš« Well outside my usual acceptable distance for errands but we’re familiar with the shop for other appliance work and they’re good. Luckily, since I’m on a bit of a sewing deadline, I should be able to book time on the library’s sewing machines and keep working on my little projects. I’m also exploring the 3D printer and Cura and Thingiverse (we have about 6 print jobs I want to try already). And I’m learning how to use a Cricut. Welcome to a month of learning too many new things.
Year 7, Day 101: Well, this is crap. I’m still taking my antivirals diligently but SmolAc’s germs still got me. The throat pain is so bad that it’s referring pain right into my ear, and neither set of painkillers is doing a whole lot to reduce it. For once the acetaminophen is a little more effective at blunting the pain than the ibuprofen but that’s not saying a whole lot. Doing my best to rest between creative projects.
Sigh.
Also it’s time to start creeping up bedtimes and waking times because getting these kids up and out the door on time is going to be PAINFUL. (ESPECIALLY when I don’t want to be up myself.)
August 7, 2026
1. I’m a UBI girl and this kind of community-care income club is a really neat idea in the absence of a government-wide set up.
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