Tag: pandemic

Mostly Budget Musings

So, life has continued, time has kept flowing, while I’ve been locked out of this little blog.

We’re still in a pandemic… maybe? Is it endemic yet? I can’t keep up and I’m so fried. Does everything seem to be slipping and getting worse? All this awful hateful stuff going on in the world, from invasions/war, to attacks on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, to all the endless shootings and mass shootings. Life is freaking stressful.

And inflation. Skyrocketing inflation in some sectors. Used car prices are freaking SHOCKING. It’s inane, and you can’t get a freaking loan for one unless your credit is perfect. Seriously, my friend is currently so screwed right now by this. And Housing. Can we talk about housing prices? House or apartment if you are hunting right now you are pretty damn screwed. There is a 600 sq. ft. apartment with 1 bed, 1 bath in my town for $950/month… that is a STEAL these days! It’s outrageous at the same time. 600 sq. ft. is very small. It is suitable only for a single person or a couple and nearly $1,000/month. wtf.

We all know gas prices are up, $5/gallon at least, it’s impacting the way my family lives. We bought our house in a rural town, about 30 minutes commute to work for all but one of us, (who can walk to work) and gas prices are just murder right now. Especially for my eldest who makes like $14/hour. (and that’s with a recent raise!!!) She probably loses around $10/day of that to gas to and from work, I mean, we ALL do but she is hardest hit. Our son rides in with my husband and husband makes decent money, I’m taking a hit for sure but not as bad as my eldest. We’ve got other struggles, of course, medical care, medicine, etc etc. Grocery prices are climbing. It all SUCKS.

So, I’ve been working on actually budgeting, something that makes me uncomfortable. Budget to me means limits, limitations that I might crash up against and feel… stifled or something. It goes against my free-spirited way of doing things. I prefer to be free-range. I haven’t laid out a lot of actual limits for specific things because for some things we’re just not in control. Like the electric bill, for example, I have to pay what they charge us. I’m working on driving down our usage instead of setting an amount. That’s what I’m doing with fuel for our cars too, just trying to minimize driving. Prescriptions are picked up on the way to or from work. Thrift shop visits, and any other shopping are also added to other trips. I am planning my routes so I hit things in logical order with no back-tracking. I couldn’t bring myself to set an amount for groceries. I’m not going to have us going hungry or anything. I have goals for the grocery bills and I’m aiming for them. I have gotten our costs down somewhat already so I guess it’s a win.

What I have set limits on, solid enforceable limits, are take-out, entertainment and gifts. I also started a fund for vacations/travel, (which we do so little that we’ve never considered tracking it) just to have it as a limit on what can be spent IF we ever get to travel anywhere. So there is an amount set for take-out (and the other things)for each month, we track that amount, it can accumulate month to month but it cannot be overdrawn. When it’s gone it’s gone and we need to deal with it. Yeah, it’s an experiment for sure, and I hope it goes well and keeps us on an even keel. I’m also keeping a list of needed items for thrift shopping/other shopping. Like work shirts for my husband and son, and the sizes and preferences, I also have a limit on what I can spend on this stuff. Credit cards are dangerous so I am not going to spend more than we can pay. So, limits, fun stuff. Hopefully it won’t make us feel deprived. Cuts have to be made.

Keeping the food budget down is tricky but doable. I’m growing a little bit of food now, we have our pre-paid farm-share to lean on June-November, and pasta and rice are pretty cheap. I am being careful with buying things like meat, nuts, and other expensive things. Cutting out junk-food is huge, of course. I’m discontinuing buying chips, soda, cookies and other junk, still keeping crackers for the moment. But we can pop some popcorn instead of chips and have homemade iced tea instead of soda. More work but less money and better for us. Win-win.

I’ve got this idea that we need to “use what we have” in a lot of areas. Like let’s play the board games, card games, video games and RPGs we already own. Let’s read the books we have and use the library for more books and movies because it’s FREE. Let’s dig into our stashes of art supplies, fiber, and recycleable bits and bobs for projects. I mean, sometimes, we might actually need to pick up an item or 2 but probably a lot, lot less than we currently do. It’s a great principle from the old Tightwad Gazette; “First, go to your stash and see what you can make from what you already have. Do not spend money if you don’t have to.” Well, that’s where we’re at right now.

Success @ Work!

YAY! I’ve been feeling pretty bad about work lately, for months if I’m honest, and last week it all started to turn around. I ran a successful program for eight participants, EIGHT! That is the biggest turnout since before Covid19 and I am just absolutely delighted. The presenter who was supposed to run it had to bail on me because she got Covid and has to quarantine and recover. I said “no worries, I got it, I hope you get well very soon.” and then quietly panicked for a bit. We made gnomes and gingerbread men and it went well. ^_^

That was all Friday last week. Saturday I put in my December book order, planned 3 continuing programs for January and beyond, created flyers for the programs and a calendar of events for January, and basically just set myself up for success in the new year as much as I could before taking my upcoming vacation. Well, vacation time, we’re not going anywhere, I’m just going to freaking relax. Anyway, at this point I am feeling pretty good about being able to take the time off and just chill and not worry too much about work.

My son and I are planning the menu for Yule/Christmas and getting ready for some pre-holiday baking. My grown kids and husband put up the tree last night and we’ll be decorating/lighting it soon. I’m planning on games, movies, and other little activities to make the season bright. Here’s hoping we all have a happy holiday season and good health and happiness in the coming year!

Abandonment & Update

Yep, I have practically abandoned this poor little blog. At first I was too busy posting on on my Pathfinder Pictograph blog but lately we haven’t been gaming much and I haven’t been posting there as a direct result.

So, for the past several months I’ve been working, gaming in other games somewhat, and mostly creating art. My scribbles during the Age of Ashes run are fun and all but that has become so infrequent that it just doesn’t bleed off any of my mad urge to create anymore. In my work as a teen librarian I do a fair bit of creating as I try out potential crafts to see if they are something I can run as an outdoor workshop or a take-home craft for the teens. I have so many ideas right now and I doubt many of them will see the light of day as Covid 19 the Delta variant seems to be gaining momentum. *sigh* Take home crafts will likely be the order of the day again before long.

We did get to hold one craft outdoors in person so far, we made little fish out of felt and stuffing and such. It was fun so I got out a zombie kit someone gave me a long time ago. The zombie design was terrible just… awful. So I used the materials from the kit to make something more appealing. A cuter zombie.

The one in the middle is the first felt zombie I designed using the materials from a kit. I then made the one on the right with my own supplies and a little from the kit. Zombie # 3 on the left is a little construction worker zombie I designed and created and from that point on I went hog-wild and created 12 more zombies over the past week or 2. I’ve just been designing and sewing up a storm. I’m having an absolute blast! Each zombie is unique and as I go I have greatly expanded the kinds of feature I can add. I love this so much. I’ve also been keeping a sketchbook, current pages include a fair number of zombie or zombie-related sketches, but I’m having a lot of fun. I store my horde in a little Estee Lauder … bag/case-thing which I think is hilarious. Super fashionable zombie horde transport for the modern necromancer on the go!

Future plans obviously involve a zombie workshop or take-home craft. Yeah. It’s hot and muggy here, well, the temp has dropped to reasonable but the humidity is still murderous. Anyway, I am still alive and keeping busy. Be safe.

Songs…

I am approaching my breaking point. My overwhelming feeling is “I wish I could just stop crying…” but I’m not crying. I am maintaining pretty well on the outside. I am, for the most part, keeping up with feeding everyone, laundry, work, pet care… Fuck, I am even pushing ahead in some areas: getting more competent at my job, decluttering this place, eating better, getting slightly more exercise, I’ve even got a garden plan lurching into motion this week! I’m orchestrating weekly date nights. Fucking date nights! (no pun intended, see? I’m even keeping up my sense of humor!) I am exhausted from this past year plus. This song is just my anthem right now:https://youtu.be/r5yaoMjaAmE (Human, by Christina Perri) closely followed by: https://youtu.be/BF-nZziUCCY (You Don’t Know, by Katelyn Tarver)

I am plodding ahead encouraging, supporting, drying the tears, soothing the fears, reassuring my 3 anxious, autistic, grown children. “Just one step at a time, Sweetie, I’m here, just do one thing at a time, breathe, I’m here, I’m here.” “It’s okay my little love, it’s ok, just keep showing up, that’s the thing, that’s at least 75% of life, you’ll find your people, you DO know how to connect, you have deep connections, look at me, look at my eyes, we have a connection, me and you, that’s not a guarantee, that’s not automatic, even if I wasn’t your mom I would WANT to hang out with you because you are funny, you are kind, you are brilliant! Look at me, look at the cats, look at dad, look at our puppy dog who fucking worships you. Making friends is a skill you can learn. Depression is a LIAR.” “you’re doing great, we all start from where we are, it’s ok, you’re making progress, you’re doing great, I’m here, I’m right here beside you.” I’m getting more sleep lately but this song was my life for parts of this, even before the fucking pandemic: https://youtu.be/cjVQ36NhbMk (How to save a life, by The Fray)

I am grateful to Amanda Fucking Palmer forever for her song that tells the truth of motherhood. She sings about the early days/weeks/months but honestly, the central message holds fucking true. At the end of the day, if everyone is alive, that is a victory, a line in the sand, and we got up the next day and try even harder to be better. https://youtu.be/bDk7CNsQqUk (Mother’s Confession, by Amanda Palmer ~Note LONG song) She’s captured the exhaustion, the frustration and the fears of being in charge of fragile beings. And, while I’m talking about fear, here’s another one that captures all the fears I can barely name for fear of shattering: https://youtu.be/70ApTTyKpdg (Drowning in the sound, by AFP)

It probably seems like all this music is, I don’t know, fucking depressing? But on the rare occasions when I get to play it all and sing and cry, away from the eyes of those who need me to be a rock in this stormcrash life, it helps. I sing loads of other highly emotional songs that are less on the nose too, and I cry and it helps. But I am surrounded by people who need me to be strong, and they never really leave the house, you know? And, for the one who is My rock, I need to keep it together, need to keep pulling beside him so he knows he isn’t carrying it all alone. We have a lot on our plate here and it is what it is, I’m not going to drop in my traces. This is one of the songs that sums up how I feel about our relationship: https://youtu.be/0yW7w8F2TVA (Say you won’t let go; by James Arthur) This one too, adding in the rest we need, the break we’d like to have from responsibilities for a while: https://youtu.be/GemKqzILV4w (chasing cars, by Snow Patrol) How many weddings you think this one gets played at? https://youtu.be/450p7goxZqg (All of me, by John Legend) Anyway, I’ll happily jump on that bandwagon.

I’m ok. I will be ok. Writing all this here helps.

Desperate Times

I was reading a thread the other day about the increase in shoplifting that’s going on and how the uptick is mainly food, baby formula, and diapers. So many people are hungry and desperate it’s absolutely heartbreaking. The ban on evictions ends January 1st and there is likely to be a tidal wave of homelessness just a week after Christmas. Most people commenting were sympathetic to those resorting to theft out of necessity but there were some who drew an unyielding line: Stealing Is Wrong and no one should ever resort to it. *sigh I don’t think I’ll ever understand that thinking. One commenter had seen a teen arrested for stealing a loaf of bread priced at under $1. They offered to pay for it but the store insisted the teen be arrested for such a heinous crime. Absolutely heartless.

Loads of stores of all types draw a hard line when it comes to theft. I mean, obviously, if people just take stuff all the time it a major freaking problem, I get it. But we’re living in desperate times. If you’re lucky enough to have held onto your job, managed not to catch, or have someone close to you catch Covid 19, if you are able to access food, water, shelter, etc…. so far, well that’s awesome. Seriously, those of us who are still employed, healthy, and managing to keep up with our bills, are so lucky. Maybe every time you’ve lost a job you’ve been able to scramble and find another one before starvation and homelessness occured. Maybe every time you’ve needed it the safety net has caught you or you’ve got enough family, friends, and/or strong community that has been there to help so that it never came to you becoming desperate enough to steal food. Not everyone is so lucky.

What if you didn’t have all of that luck? all those connections? What if when you lost your job, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get another one? What if that stayed true until unemployment ran out? What if the safety net of food-stamps/EBT card/WIC/Fuel assistance, etc wasn’t there when you needed it? What if so many in your community were unable to feed their families that you’d spent 7 hours in line to get food from the food pantry but before you got to head of the line the food ran out? What if your friends and family were all in the same boat as you and unable to help you? How many days could you watch your kids go hungry before you tried begging strangers to help? How many days without food would it take before you started to reason: “I’ll just take exactly what I need, just a little bit of food, and I’ll pay the store back as soon as I can.”

Access to food, water and shelter should not be dependant on having enough money to pay for it. The basics of life should be provided for those who fall on hard times by a safety net. Any decent safety net should include help with job searches, access to training/education, and so on. We want to live in a strong, healthy society, right? We want to build our communities up and prosper all together, don’t we? I don’t want anyone left out or left behind. I want everyone to be fed, clothed, sheltered, and have access to medical care and education. I want everyone to feel secure and safe. There is enough for all our needs to be met so why don’t we mould our society to provide for everyone? Right now, a tiny minority of people avariciously hoard most of the resources while many, many people go hungry, suffer homelessness, lack medical care and shelter, that is insane.

Where can people go to find help? To get food? There are still places people can contact to try to get help:

These are some that I found with a quick google search. I believe these are orgs that are active nationally or maybe regionally, and there are likely more local resources in any given area. Local churches, temples, and so on may provide access to food or clothing. Some schools and colleges have food pantries or “free closets” as well. Some restaurants or grocery stores, especially small, local places may off leftover food to folks in need. I work in a Public Library and in addition to offering free access to books, movies, and craft activities (in a bag during Covid) we also have appointments available so people can use computers/internet and printers. Your local librarian can help connect you to local resources. We often have flyers from local orgs or hear about resources in the community. Public Libraries may also offer free wifi inside the library or even out into the parking lot. Some libraries provide free wifi during business hours and some may provide wifi around the clock.

We all need to be kind to each other and help where we can. These are crazy times we’re living in and we all need help now and then.

I’m trying

It’s December 7th and it just doesn’t feel like it. I’m trying to get into a jolly holiday mood but it’s tough this year. There are over 280,000 people dead of Covid 19 in the U.S. so far and that is a whole lot of grieving families. There are 20,000 people with cases severe enough to be in the ICU right now and many more infected. In many places around the country our healthcare system is close to collapse and we still haven’t even gotten to the post Thanksgiving spike. Cases are on a massive upswing while at the same time my library is continuing to open back up. This scares the hell out of me. I love my job, and I need my job, but if I bring Covid 19 home to my husband it is likely to kill him. Every time I see my mother, from 10 feet away, outdoors, masked, and brief, she cries and says she can’t take it anymore. She 74 with a heart condition and this whole thing has worn her down. So fa la la la la and stuff.

Still, I’ve been trying. We went and picked out a tree and set it in the stand… like a week ago… and it still has no lights. I set up our advent calendar and we keep forgetting to open the drawers and read the little slips. I got the kids involved in a bit of holiday baking, that went pretty well, everyone loves cookies. I played Christmas CDs and tried to keep things light and happy for a while. This was the most successful I have been at getting into the holiday mood lately. I’ll keep at it.

Cookie making festivities… (to be continued soon, I like to bake.)

There are many cookies still to bake, there are some presents to be wrapped, we are all here together and as safe as we can be in these mad times. So well, bake, we’ll game, we’ll wrap up the presents, we’ll keep the wood stove going and we’ll get around to decorating the tree real soon. I can’t believe all the protections put in place to help people weather the pandemic will probably be allowed to expire soon. I just cannot fathom the heartlessness that would see a massive wave of evictions during this time of crisis and in winter. I can only hope the incoming administration will leap to the rescue of the American people and do everything they can to get help and relief to folks, and PPE and other critical support to our frontline healthcare workers. Too many people already struggle to get enough to eat, too many have already been evicted, too many are stuck in a whirlpool of tragic events, grief and despair. It’s all too much and I’m not personally facing these issues, yet.

Watching the cars outside my window…

So we’re ill again, somehow, despite a million precautions. Husband gets a Covid test later today and then we wait to hear back. UGH. The worry is hard to keep at bay but I’m doing my best. We’re okay, our symptoms are pretty mild and if Covid wasn’t a thing we wouldn’t be concerned about them at all.

We have so much on our plates it’s insane. I don’t know how we’re doing it sometimes. But we are so that’s good. I am tired and achey and I’m going to rest. Be well, Everyone. Be safe.

Reopening & Other Progress

My library will be opening by appointment starting next Tuesday. We have approval from all sorts of boards to allow one family/household at a time come in to browse, use computers etc for 30 minutes at a time. Our local numbers are very low and flat so everyone feels like this is a good move but as we are heading into a season when this virus is likely to surge again, I am nervous. We will be starting with only Tuesday hours and I don’t work Tuesday so, who knows, maybe we will be reevaluating this move before it even changes anything for me specifically.

I’ll be off next week until Friday so I can celebrate the holiday and other things. I welcome the time off to cook and clean for our feast. All the laptops are finally gone now so I can get moving ahead again! We also have 2 slightly raised bed gardens installed at this point and one in progress for what will be our berry patch. We have tentative plans for a live willow fence along the front yard as well. I am looking forward to finally, hopefully, growing a decent portion of our veggies and berries. Even our yard is becoming more organized.

Our new raised beds and future berry patch

Our Thanksgiving feast is pretty much planned and our Yule feast is mostly finalized. I have the main course narrowed down to 2 options and I’ll just order both and see which I get. I’m looking forward to our once a year, amazing turkey next Thursday, and our Yule/Xmas feast next month.

Yesterday I finished 2 projects for Xmas, one was a small, simple project I made 6 of and one was a longer term, lots of work project for a dear friend we are adopting into our clan. (Assuming she doesn’t run screaming into the hills when she realizes we’re all mad here.) I still have a bunch of projects I haven’t even started including a set of Hogwarts cloth napkins I want to make for our table. I’m not into matchy-matching everything except for special occasions. For our big feasts and celebrations I like to go all in and give us a real sense of occasion. I need to keep reminding myself that I am very much on track right now and that it is all under control. I am doing less this year and that’s why I have room for the long-delayed napkin sewing etc.

Got the first two napkins pinned and ready to sew. Only six more to go!

A Very Covid Thanksgiving

I haven’t been posting because I had an allergic reaction that lasted for days and then suffered a tick bite that required a doctor visit and antibiotics. Gods, I hate ticks so much. They are the worst.

This year Thanksgiving is going to be a little different. Usually this is a day to gather with family, and/or friends, to feast and celebrate but this year we would all be wise if we did any gathering via Zoom or Skype or some such. Our day will be spent, as all days since sometime in March, with only those who live in our household. That’s somewhat typical for us, we often have one or two loved ones from outside our home attend,but we’re not into huge gatherings. My mother is very into the big gatherings, the bigger the better. She used to host, and we would sometimes go (or go to my husband’s motherer’s) but the last few years she’s gone to her brother’s. Now, his state has just straight up said if folks go there they need to quarantine for 2 weeks. I predict she will go anyway and just blatantly skip the whole quarantine. That’s my guess.

I saw her the other day and she started crying and said she can’t take the pandemic anymore, she just really can’t. I sympathized and did not point out that she is exactly the reason why we are still in this shit. She travelled to neighboring states 3 times this summer to vacation. I saw the pictures of her on the beach with a group of people and jammed together for a photo not a mask in sight. I know she has gone to friend’s houses and had her friends over. She has had the woman who works for them in the house 5 days a week, she has continued to have a house cleaner in twice a week. Etc etc, etc. She also refused to wear a mask when she was out walking in her town. And now, 8 months since the start of the pandemic, we are still refusing to get together with her for a meal. Damn right we are! Christmas isn’t looking good either because the number of cases is climbing like I cannot even believe right now.

Christmas will be weird. My mother usually comes for that and even helps cook but this year I think it will just be my little family and some zoom calls. Our scaled back presents and Maximum Effort feast and holiday decor will have to carry the day. We’ll probably watch movies and play board games since getting a PS5 seems impossible at this point. Ooof. I know they were all hoping big for that console and some new games but profiteers bought up all the consoles and, last we checked, were selling them for FOUR TIMES the retail price. Jerks.

In Good News: I finally got a turkey! It took a month and this is the third time I ordered one and they were always out of stock by the time our pick-up appointment came around. Today we got one. The one I ordered was out of stock but the young woman who got our order substituted from some other brand. It’s about 14lbs so pretty perfect for us. Plenty for dinner and plenty for leftovers and there will be soup, oh yes.

Remember, Remember…

So, to catch me up to today: democracy still hangs in the balance, we topped 100,000 infections yesterday, wow, and my hometown voted over 90% for the side of sanity, human rights, and compassion. A mixed bag. I don’t know how many died of Covid19 yesterday but it’s usually around 1,000. One thousand, it’s just a number, so abstract to hear it like that: 1,000 died yesterday. That is 1,000 people, 1,000 human lives cut short in a horrific way. 1,000 people dying pretty much alone, isolated, every single day from just this one disease. I say all that to remind myself of the 10s of thousands of broken hearts happening because of those deaths. I need to be patient, be safe, keep everyone safe by continuing to wear a mask, keeping a nice 6 ft distance from others, staying the course.

Still no word on whether democracy will be renewed for any further seasons. I’m trying not to think about it. I’m trying not to think about the awful people out there threatening the poll workers with guns to try to get them to stop counting votes because they don’t care about democracy or freedom only the continuation of their orange faced baboon in chief’s reign of idiocy and destruction. So, good job me, there I go thinking about it!

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Think about art, think about gardening, think about books and reading. It’s all good. It’s all good. Everything will be ok, sanity will prevail, it will. When it does there will be a fuckton of work to do to get things back to anything approaching normal or good, again. And there will be even more work to do to bring about universal healthcare, racial justice, and human rights for all. Things are bad, and the flames have been fanned by a madman for nearly 4 years now, so it’s going to suck, and be a huge amount of work to fix it, but we can fix it. Ok, here’s me not thinking about it again.

I’ll be stress-eating if anyone needs me.