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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June 29, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 55: We’ve been doing a LOT of walking the past week, much more than normal for me, and my fatigue and pain are (mostly) only ratcheting up a couple notches rather than zipping straight to the top of the chart. This is novel! I’m curious whether this could be a potential new low baseline when I’m not working a huge horribly stressful job, but it’s too early to tell. There are also the variables of travel/vacation mode, a lot of family taking care of everything in ways that won’t be possible at home, being deprived of my laptop so being unable to attend to my usual schedule of household responsibilities and so on. Removing the job aspect is only one variable.
My hands have been swollen every day for the past two weeks. That’s an unusual reversion to the pain points of my youth. I’m used to working around the hand mitts (it’s awkward) but I’ve become accustomed to roving pain giving me a bit of relief by way of changing daily pain points rather than these stationary pain points.
Year 7, Day 56: I spent a lot of time on the Paze Spend $10, Get $10 Back Promotion: Get $100 per Credit Card offer today. Mostly because I was moving very slowly.
There aren’t a lot of merchants that we use yet and the Newegg gift card hack was dead by the time I got there, only a week after the promotion was live! But we need more pimple patches and back pocket supplies (little sunscreens and hand sanitizers) for when we have to travel REALLY light, so I picked some up using the deal.
Microburst of stress cleaning: I tackled our medicine cabinet: discarding expired meds, recycling empty bottles, putting all our reusable baggies in a new clear box to get a better view of what we have on hand.
Year 7, Day 57: The kids have begun anticipating the COVID booster for our summer travel and that reminded me that I need to decide if we’re going to pay out of pocket for it since Kaiser has stopped paying for, or approving, more than one shot a year. Since I am functionally still (if not diagnostically / officially) immunocompromised this is a problem. I have access to antivirals for now but my immune system is still trash. Annoyingly, Costco used to list their COVID vax prices but don’t anymore. It used to be about $125 per person? I can’t find pricing for CVS or Walgreens. They all say something about accepting outside insurance but don’t list the price for uninsured patients.
Microburst of stress cleaning: The chaos drawer that’s never once been organized, full of reused storage, rubber bands, bag clips, etc, has been completely cleared out and set to rights. SmolAc was so confused when they opened that drawer, they closed and opened it a few times wondering if they were in the wrong room.
Year 7, Day 58: All of the ARGH. Delta Dental won’t cover part of JB’s recent procedure because their definition of requirements for coverage do not match the procedures. That’s another $600+ out of pocket I have to cover. That’s in addition to two sets of braces, another oral surgery, increased auto and home insurance policies…. the list isn’t endless but it feels like a wallop. We still have income through the end of the year but mild to moderate financial surprises make me very uncomfortable now.
On the bright side, I have found the documentation to submit my claims for some missing money. The really old address one 3 homes back was causing some consternation. This will result in maybe $12 if it comes through. I should find out in something like 2 months since these are very tiny cash-type claims.
“Unclaimed property law allows up to 180 days from the date that we receive a complete claim package to review all documentation and make a decision on whether or not the documentation supports the claim. Property owner claims that involve cash only may be processed in as little as 30 to 60 days. More complex claims, such as those filed by heirs, involving multiple owners, or involving businesses are generally processed within 180 days.”
Year 7, Day 59: I’ve been manually updating all my file backups. I maintain a networked and a non-networked backup. I’d like a third layer, honestly. This double layer backup system helped me with the claims. Some files were inexplicably missing from one system and I was able to retrieve them from the other. I do need to spend some time figuring out how to manually back up the photos though, they’re currently backed up automatically into the networked system and I can’t easily drag and drop from there.
Microburst of stress cleaning: I went through all the Halloween candy, discarding old candy so I could finally wash and put away the buckets that have taken up permanent residence on the counter in the past few years. The buckets were replaced with a nice basket to hold snacks and the fresh candy. Even the counter got scrubbed! I will not confess to how long it’s been since it’s had a proper scrub but the fact I can’t remember should tell you it’s been too long. This is the price of keeping two kids alive and working two jobs – we have let things slide around here.
Time to yell at lawmakers again: Exclusive: The Bay Areaβs National Archives Office Is Closing. Researchers Are Worried
June 26, 2026
1. Entirely by happenstance, we got to spend time with friends from the East Coast AND from Alaska, both passing through the Bay Area. That was great fun.
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June 22, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 48: JB and I had the school lost and found project scheduled and we’d invited one of their friends to come help out since they were bored at home. I didn’t expect Friend to be a great deal of help but having the extra set of hands did make a difference aside from being a bit of company. We had to load, and then unload, 15 bags and 7 cases of books, open all the bags, construct all the shipping boxes, sort and pack the books evenly so they didn’t overset any single box, check the zippers to make sure they worked on all hoodies and jackets, and then do team lifting after we’d stuffed the boxes as full as we could. We completed a huge 2-5 day task (depending on whether 1 or 2 of us was working it) in five hours (with a break for lunch and rest). We even got the boxes to the shipper in the same day – that’s never happened before. Very proud of ourselves!
Year 7, Day 49: I’ve taken some time off work to visit family and am observing the changes in my body while I’m offline. Lots will probably remain the same but it’d be nice if anything changed. These first days I see my fingers are EXTRA swollen. I can tell because my ring that usually fits as expected is instead leaving giant grooves. Too tight rings always provokes anxiety over possibly having to cut it off! Never have had to but it’s felt like it’s gotten close.
Sleeping in some mornings has been really nice. The overall stresses of the past few? several? years has messed with my sleep a lot. For months I wasn’t sleeping much, then it felt like the full sleep debt was called so I was an anchor dragging myself out of bed. PiC’s massive sleep debt was also called in and he was actually able to sleep in until 1030 this week. I wonder if I can even learn to nap in the future.
Year 7, Day 50: My supply of scent-acceptable shampoo and conditioner is starting to run alarmingly low so it’s time to scramble again. What sounds like it won’t offend my scent receptors?
A price comparison of these five items surprised me:
Herbal Essences Shampoo Grapefruit – 13.5 oz
Herbal Essences Conditioner, Grapefruit – 13.5 oz
Herbal Essences Eucalyptus – 13.5 fl oz
Herbal Essences Eucalyptus – 13.5 fl oz
Herbal Essences Conditioner Tea Tree – 33.8 fl oz
With a May 20% off promo code, this comes to a total of $50.35 pre-tax at Walgreens, $55.32 after tax. I’ll submit a P&G rebate offer for $15 off $50. That’ll bring us to $40.32. There’s also 3% cashback from MrRebates but I won’t include that in my price comparisons. I also get $10 in Walgreens cash for the order but since that doesn’t defray the costs of THIS order, I won’t count that either.
That same cart, with a $3 Herbal Essences coupon and 5% off with the Target circle card, came to $57.45 pre-tax and $57.13 after tax at Target. There’s a Rakuten 1% off as well.
I was glad to see it worked out this way because we are trying to avoid shopping Target.
I don’t love that these are all more than I’d normally pay. The old standby of Tresemme used to price out at about $3.50-$4.25 per 28 ounce bottle after coupons and discounts. But the changed formula now induces headaches and nausea. Can’t be perimenopause according to my OB because my oral BC already gives me a steady supply of estrogen that would make up for a perimenopausal drop in estrogen.
I learned how to make paper balloons.
Year 7, Day 51: My other layer of layoff worry. This is so much pressure on PiC. He’s not been happy at his job for a couple years. He was happy with the change at first, 2020-2022. But the constant layoffs, while we’re grateful they’ve missed him so far, have more than tripled his workload. It’s taking a significant toll on him. He’s not complaining about needing to keep it together because we’re down to just his income but it’s very hard to plan to rest and recover when he’s now the sole income provider and is under SO MUCH pressure.
I feel immense pressure to figure out how to dive into another high-level high-income job when I really don’t want that life anymore. But let’s be honest, it’s still a bit of a puzzle to figure out what I want and can do, anyway. They don’t always match up. All the things I really want to do require a physical ability that I haven’t had in decades but maybe things on that front could change after I’m finally released from this particular level of hell.
On that note, PiC’s company just did another mass layoff. The last one was only 6-8 months ago! He was thankfully not cut and/but will be slowly learning about the impacts of those cuts, pile on the extra work!, over the next few weeks. This is why I always have some empathy for how hard it is to be left behind in a layoff too. You still have income but going by his experience, your quality of life seriously deteriorates over time. If you care, that is. In my company the people left don’t care and are garbage at their jobs (HR ahem).
Year 7, Day 52: The burden of meal planning and prep and cooking hasn’t been on me OR PiC for a few days and I can’t fully express how much of a weight it lifts off my whole being. Usually I have to engineer this sort of thing to create that space but the family time has even rendered that part moot. We’ve also gotten some sleep even though the kids are actually up first every day, they’ve been playing quietly without bothering us until we both wake up. It’s because of the novelty more than anything, this won’t last since we do have to get back to work but I’m enjoying it while it does. Heck, we’ve even been able to let PiC sleep in late twice. He normally always has to be up with the kids because I’m a slow waker with the pain and fatigue delaying sleep for hours but I’ve been able to fall asleep by midnight a lot of nights instead of 2-4 am so he’s gotten a turn at the mid morning waking.
June 19, 2026
1. While I’d like the dang app to just show me my friends’ posts, Instagram has learned to show me very cute animals and I love that bit.
Comment replies since the app is buggy:
@Beth: Great minds! I did start looking at some philanthropic foundations. No traction so far but definitely an area to continue exploring.
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June 17, 2026
Life with JB
Grown adults still thinking that getting paid more means losing it all to taxes makes me batty. After another athlete shared that they had their contract written for a dollar less than $1M because of taxes, I pulled JB aside to explain marginal tax rates to them. They need to know well in advance of earning any kind of W-2 income that, generally speaking, earning an extra dollar is always worthwhile even if you’re going to be paying a higher tax rate specifically on those dollars that land in the higher rate threshold because that is STILL more money.Worthwhile mathematically, at least, the decision about whether it’s worth the time is for another conversation.
Then we talked about the basics of investing (time in the market…) and not speculating which is basically another form of gambling. We covered the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market Bubble as an example of speculation.
There’s an irony in our sleeping arrangements these days. I had to share one large bed with my mom and brother when I was in elementary school, each of us getting one puzzle piece of the bed, because we were too poor to afford an extra bed or an extra room. Now, we have enough beds and rooms for everyone! But PiC is stuck bunking with SmolAc who cannot sleep alone yet and ever since my depressive episode, JB moved into our bed leaving their own entirely spacious bed which now serves only as an overly fancy table and bed for their plushies.
Life with Smol Acrobat (5.4)
SmolAc has always seemed like someone else’s kid when it comes to potatoes. I love them in every form. They would only eat fried potatoes: French fries, waffle fries, and hash browns. Anything else was a nope. No mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, nada. Until they started helping me dig for potatoes in the garden. Those potatoes I can cook anyway I want and they’ll happily eat them, picking one at random and holding it up, “I digged this one!” before chomping.
It’s embarrassing to realize this so late, or maybe it just flared up?, but SmolAc’s emotional regulation is garbage. We dealt with this in JB at age 2-3 and it took 2 years for them to learn to cope with disappointment. We hadn’t been paying too much attention to the effects of letting JB coddle them every time they were sad, but I am now, and WOW are they a pain when they experience the least amount of disappointment. It’s awful. SO we are starting the JB program of sitting in the sadness and working through that feeling and not hurting ourselves and others. How did I let this happen? ARGH.
But we are doing it and it is slowly sllloowwwwllyyyy taking some minor effect. It’s going to take a bit, I assume, to get all the way there.
JB has been banned from coddling until this is done.
Pupdate
We recently visited a local rescue and met a lot of dogs but none of them, except one small one, particularly liked us. The small one was absolutely obsessed with us (and me) but I’m not prepared to bring home a small dog yet. I’m looking for a medium-large that I can still lift. I can definitely still lift her! But … my yearning is for a much bigger dog.
Precious Moments
SmolAc: Wee doesn’t know everything right?
Me: No one knows everything.
SmolAc: They don’t know how to drive. I don’t know how to drive. I am just a kid! I don’t know the rules! Not even when I was a baby! Babies are not tall enough to drive. Dey defly cannot know how to brake.
SmolAc, testing pens: This doesn’t work. Oh no! But I love it!
Me: Show me.
SmolAc, scribbling, no ink comes out: Nooo! Blue is my favorite color!
Me: That’s purple, babe.
Respecting boundaries and loving each other and mischief
SmolAc: JB may I pwease use your soap?
JB to SmolAc with hugs and kisses: You are the best little sibling ever mwah mwah mwah! (SmolAc eats it right up)
SmolAc: Those are cute potatoes!
Me: Yeah, I think I’m putting those back into the grow bag…
Sotto voce to JB: should we eat dem, Wee?
When I looked at them, innocently: What?
June 15, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 41: Somehow we landed on some cruise lines’ mailing lists which is starting to make me batty. We don’t cruise. Stop sending us junk that I have to clean up! I usually email these places and tell them to stop mailing us shit but Silversea especially pissed me off claiming that brochures sent from their name and address aren’t being sent by them at all, they’re coming from travel agents. Oh really? Travel agents who want our money but won’t get it because we won’t use their services because we don’t see the middleperson in this mailing at all? That makes a lot of sense, yep!
I just remembered the cocktail that I liked a while back, so this is a reminder to myself order this drink: Blackberry Vodka Mojito. I hate rum but always forget that’s what’s in mint mojitos until I taste it and then sadness. (I also hate gin.) Vodka and tequila are fine in reasonable amounts, so is white wine, so if I MUST drink an alcoholic beverage (practically never) I really ought to stamp this one across the inside of my wrist so I don’t mistakenly order a cocktail of regret yet again. Since I imbibe about once every 5 years, the chances are very high that I’m going to forget.
Year 7, Day 42: Last week’s ask results:
A) deeply irritated that the company is completely unreasonable and refusing to budge on anything important. I can’t tell if this is a firm position or if it’s the healthcare position of “always refuse the first ask no matter how justified” so I’m going to push back.
B) Vision Plan reimbursement. They said it’d take 20 days but it’s been paid! Saved: $59.03 of the $61.80 paid.
C) The sharpener warranty: They said it’d take 6 weeks but they shipped a replacement without any fuss! Saved: $21.50 (They were $16 in 2020, now $20).
Thinking about how prices have risen, I noticed that my gardening gloves were previously $14 in 2020, now they’re $19. Thank goodness I’d gotten an extra pair back then when I realized they were a good fit.
Year 7, Day 43: I’d shared a while back on Bluesky: Going down to a 1-income household while still being a party of 4 for an unknown period of time is in fact causing me a lot of underlying stress and anxiety.
I’ve been the breadwinner since I was 17. Yes I have saved intensely for this situation whether it was me or him. No that doesn’t help my stress at all.
Not that PiC hasn’t been an equal breadwinner because he has been and his income and mine have always been joint funds equally regardless of how much each earned. This is my amygdala freaking out over my lack of personally earned income.
That and the fact that for a while we can’t help anyone til I figure out what we have to do to stay stable and that’s been as much a part of my identity as being an income earner has been. This sucks in many ways.
I’ve been sitting with this feeling and thoughts because, as I said, everything (but the money) about this job sucked. So why all the anxiety? I yell at myself a few times a day.
Ironically, all the work I’ve been doing in therapy is why I’m so scared and anxious. I’ve been making room for my own health needs: feeling feelings, a lot of pacing physically (which means: NOT doing), and trying to get a lot more rest than I ever got in the past. I always needed more than I was getting but my fibro and CFS are now at a point where I must have a roughly 3 to 1 ratio of rest to exertion to recover from low exertion activities or my body shuts down. I’ve been cancelling or rescheduling appointments when the fatigue is high because driving isn’t safe when I’m this impaired. I don’t know if it’s accurate to compare to drunk driving because I’ve never really been drunk nor would I ever drive after having had a drink but I bet it’s similar.
I made it out of the last layoff by near killing myself proving myself at the next job. I am not the same person anymore. I can’t do that. Maybe also won’t. I shouldn’t. That means I now have to find another way to get through this next period which is boding to be incredibly rough. The corporate world has gotten immeasurably more cutthroat and corrupt. The world where you could build a business on the internet has been massively impacted by two godforsaken Trump presidencies and the huge push to steal and sell back our data by AI companies. So many small businesses that once thrived are struggling since Twitter went down.
What chance do I have? I don’t know but I’m scared that it’s “not much”. I don’t want to learn what it’s like to be unable to provide for my family. Of all the ways I thought I might parallel my mom’s life, I didn’t think this would be one.
Year 7, Day 44: The WordPress app is finally allowing me to compose again π buuut calling my reply comments grr so I’ll drop my replies to comments here.
@Alice: Yes, thankfully we will be able to make changes to PiC’s health coverage because of the layoff so that’s good so long as he continues to dodge those bullets himself.
I’d love any thoughts you want to offer on self-employment, any time!
@Linda: Thanks for the recs and the contribution! It will be so good to focus on helping folks again.
I used your wool socks to keep my feet warm at night when I could still generate warmth on my own! These days I require the help of the heating pad to get started and it’s a strange juggle trying to get warm enough only to hit too warm too warm suddenly.
@Linda: absolutely excruciating. I’m trying to make the best of it, since it is income for a while longer, but it feels like getting little hairs plucked at random times. Unfortunately the company refuses to budge on any terms for anyone for any reason π
Year 7, Day 45: @Tragic Sandwich: I hope neither of us need to put this information to use any time soon but we might as well have the knowledge. π
@Rae: congrats on your cucumbers! It’s a delight to eat from your own garden!
@Hawaii Planner: Well, that’s a bummer that UI takes so dratted long to pay out! My memory of the slowness is hazy but I’m sure things have gotten worse since 2008. Do you recall how long they will pay, by any chance? Is it a 6 month cap?
Therapeutic Bostons
June 12, 2026
1. I cooked a stir fry and that’ll be good for two meals: Dinner and a day of leftovers.
I’m very proud of myself for including two veggies (green beans and snow peas) and two proteins (pork and tofu). I wanted to add more veggies (napa cabbage, bean sprouts, carrots) but I would have to go much further afield to shop at a produce place that lets me control the volume of veggies. The place we went to prepackages normally loose veggies. While that probably reduces waste for them, it locks me into 1+ lbs of each veggie which means 5 veg types is entirely too much to make a single dish. I couldn’t even fit all the green beans in this one.
That means either I buy more types and some of it goes to waste OR I have to figure out how to use it all up in more than just one stirfry, fail, and then it goes to waste. I settled for only 2 veggies and not wasting.
It’s been hard to find the time to cook in the past 2 years of hellishness so these are baby steps back to a routine that I feel better about.
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