Someone Actually Said Covid Is Over
Someone pretty high up at work (I won’t name names or positions) stated in a meeting a few weeks ago, “Covid is over…”
No, no it’s not. One of our IT guys was recently sick around Thanksgiving with what he said was “a cold” but, you know, hardly anyone is testing anymore (and this guy thinks he had Covid back in 2018 and is refusing vaccines, so I don’t take much stock in what he says).
Someone else on the Dev team was sick around the same time, and it sounded like it was very unpleasant. He missed a couple of days of work and stayed home for a week. This week another person on the Dev team who works remotely was out for three days. Then my boss was suddenly working from home on designated in-office days, and I grilled him about it on Teams. I asked if he’d tested for Covid and he almost wasn’t going to ‘fess up, but then said, “Ok, I’ll be honest… I did test positive for Covid. So did [wife’s name].” I thanked him for testing, being honest with me about it, and staying home. After all these years working together, I’m kind of a cross between his work mom, work wife, and assistant because I remind him of things he needs to follow up on and we have mutual trust in one another. He thinks of me as his equal. I’m not, but I’ve worked there for longer than he has and I think that alone keeps him humble where I’m concerned. We have a truly fantastic working relationship.
COVID IS NOT OVER. It’s never going to be over. My mom still thinks it’s no worse than the flu, yet she knows more people who have died of Covid than of the flu. I told her it damaged my kidneys, but she is consistently forgetting every-fucking-thing I tell her. She asked me again this year how much vitamin D she should take this winter. How about you worry more about getting a fucking Covid vaccine?! If you’re getting vitamin D in your diet and taking the amount your doctor advises, you’ll be fine. You won’t die. But at 70 years old, you could die of Covid just like your pastor, your best friend, and your neighbor did. WTF, mom. I know one person who died of it, and it was before vaccines were available.
Dry Creek Falls Hike
Speaking of coworkers, I took up that one’s offer to be my hiking buddy. We met at the trailhead in Cascade Locks and did the Dry Creek Falls hike. That was our first time hiking together and I didn’t know what the dynamic would be like or if we’d get along, but it was quite pleasant! It was also my first time hiking that trail. We talked a bit about work, but we mostly talked about our kids and families, politics, religion, and planning for retirement (he’s planning on retiring next year). He’s a conservative Republican, but not the crazy kind. He doesn’t like Trump and he’s not racist or homophobic. That’s the kind of Republican I don’t mind being friends with. I could never date one, but I can be friends with them.
The subject of him hanging out with women who aren’t his wife did come up. He brought it up and talked about it like it’s totally normal for him, but weird to other people. I said, “Well I’m a lot younger than you and look younger than my actual age, so I could probably pass for your daughter!” We laughed, and nothing was ever awkward. Anyway, he has two daughters, so hanging out with a younger woman is totally normal for him. It is 100% platonic, and we are planning on snowshoeing together, probably sooner than we thought we’d be able to! We have absolutely nothing in common, so it’s… interesting.
Then again, I’ve been all about trying new things, so I guess interesting is good.
The only part that was a little weird for me was when I had to pee so badly, I had to run over to a pile of logs to relieve myself behind them. He said, “I’ll wait here for you.” He did, and I was surprised at both his politeness and not making it weird, like it’s a totally normal thing to know a coworker is dropping trou’ not far away, behind a pile of logs.
[Unplanned tangent]
I have my reasons for forming friendships with the sane, old school, never-Trump Republicans. I don’t mind being around people with differing opinions because I don’t like being in an echo chamber. The echo chamber was one of the many reasons I quit social media. I got so tired of seeing the same regurgitated links and memes that did nothing but perpetuate hatred for people who think differently than we do. No one was posting anything original; and if they did, it was either putting their best face forward, incessant complaining and negativity, or hawking their wares. It made me miss the old LiveJournal days.
Anyway, I live south of Portland, so if I didn’t have any conservative friends, I wouldn’t have many friends at all. Isn’t diversity part of the appeal of being progressive?
Republican friends can never change my mind; I’m not worried about that. My political ideology is pretty well established and set in stone. However, in talking with Republicans, I can better understand the way they think. And if they’re nice, I get a chance to see that not everyone who disagrees with me is a terrible person. That makes the world we live in feel a little bit less terrible.
Quitting social media got me off the phone and into the real world, where I can realize that people who think differently than I do can be nice people. I no longer walk around with a dark cloud over my head, hating everyone who disagrees with me and being angry and anxious and depressed all the time. I get to know people for who they are rather than what they post on social media. It’s hard to explain and would require a full-blown essay to do it, but I feel like understanding where people come from politically is as important as understanding where they come from economically. I’m socially and fiscally progressive because of the way I grew up. As a high school dropout and teen mom who grew up in Idaho with conservative, religious parents, I could have just as easily turned out Republican. In fact, when I was too young to vote, I was. Then a month after my 18th birthday I voted for Bill Clinton for POTUS.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when my ideology changed or what changed it. It just did. That doesn’t happen for everyone, just like not everyone who grows up in poverty gets a chance to get a college education. Maybe Republicans believe what they do because of the way they were raised. Maybe for some it’s because they’re uneducated. Maybe they got caught up in right-wing media and it’s fear. I really don’t know.
What I do know is that political polarization isn’t doing anyone any good at all. I blame social media for most of it, and I really wish everyone would stop using it. I wish people would put their phones down, be present, talk to strangers, try to understand one another, and show more love and compassion. The world needs more of that.
Thanksgiving
I asked my mom if I could start going to her house for Thanksgiving every year instead of Christmas because the roads are getting worse every year in late December. She said that would be fine and we could do the gift exchange then. I gave her the necklace and she loved it, then she gave me a card with a check in it. I knew she was going to do this, but I thought it was still in the works and that she’d put it in my grandpa’s checking account she added me to and said, “Use it for whatever you need.” She had sold part of one of my grandparents’ properties and wrote a check for enough to cover my student loans in full, plus $5k.
It was such a lovely time. I do always feel some frustration with how anti-intellectual she has become. I don’t know when that started for her, but I suspect it was when she got married again and moved out to the middle of nowhere. I also wonder why she doesn’t clean. Her house isn’t cluttered, but it’s filthy in places I’m accustomed to cleaning– floors, windows, walls, baseboards, and corners. If I were her I’d be washing windows and walls, shampooing carpets, and mopping floors every spring. It is a big house and she’s been busy with my grandparents for a long time, so I know she hasn’t had time. But she doesn’t seem to notice when things are dirty. She loves watching the birds eat outside her kitchen window, but that window is so dirty, you can barely see through it. It wouldn’t be that hard to clean it. She just seems… oblivious… to so many things. Oblivious to dirt, culture, modern medicine… it’s bizarre.
Oh, she also gave me a set of sheets and two pillows from MyPillow. LOL. They are quite nice. The sheets are 400 thread count and soft and shiny, and the pillows are nice and comfy. I just can’t stand Mike Lindell because of, you know, who he is and what he did. But that’s probably why my mom and stepdad started buying his stuff. We don’t talk about politics when we’re together anymore. They seem to avoid it just as much as I do. It’s been nice not to have to deal with that.
What threw me for a loop was that my stepdad’s entire family was there and my mom didn’t tell me anyone else was coming. I usually see most of them at Christmas, so I thought Thanksgiving would be small and quaint.
It wasn’t. There were 16 of us there, ranging in ages from 9 months to 70 years. And it was in a round wooden house that my eldest stepbrother and his wife had just bought and are in the process of fixing up and moving into. Eight of us slept at least two nights at my mom and stepdad’s house. It was very busy, very noisy, and very full. I’m an introvert, so it was challenging for me. But I had a flask full of bourbon and my phone, so when we all went to bed at night I watched Netflix and took a few swigs of whiskey. Ha!
The Last HOme Improvement Project for the Year
After I had my washing machine fixed I scheduled a dryer duct cleaning, a chimney sweep, then replacement of the panels in my fireplace. It’s all done now. It turns out my fireplace was built so long ago and is so old, not a single company in existence makes replacement parts for it. It’s a tiny prefabricated fireplace. In fact, the guy who replaced them said the side metal panels and bottom had likely never been replaced. I knew the back refractory panel had been replaced in 2015 because the would-be buyer before me required it to complete the sale that never went through. Sometime in the last few years it cracked again, and I learned it was because I was building fires too big and hot and a log probably fell on it and cracked it.
The guy who was here wasn’t exactly recommending all new panels, but I told him I wanted them. Might as well while he’s here, then I know exactly when the work was done and going forward, I can burn smaller fires. It also adds a little value to the home, and I have peace of mind knowing it’s safe.
This was the only company I could find who was willing (and knew how) to custom cut all of the panels. He did it that same day and did the bottom, both sides, and the back panel. The last guy who swept the chimney recommended a smaller grate to hold the logs, so I’d already acquired that. Then this guy recommended a “fireback,” which is a metal panel with feet that you put in the back to reflect heat outward and protect the back panel from getting too hot and cracking. The back of my fireplace is only about 13″ wide, so I needed to find a 12″ fireback. I did find one and ordered it. It’s 1/2″ thick which isn’t their thickest one, but it’s cheaper than the 3/4″ thick one. I wasn’t willing to spend more for something that might be overkill for my tiny fireplace. Then just for good measure, I ordered a 2″ deep adjustable tray to go underneath the grate for the logs. That’ll help protect the fireplace floor. The fireback should arrive Friday, then I’ll finally be able to have a fire again. I’ll start with a fire log I bought at Fred Meyer and make sure everything is safe before I use wood again. Then after I burn what wood I have, I might switch entirely to fire logs. The guy did say that these small prefab fireplaces are meant only for ambience.
The panel replacement cost $860, so yeah, I’m gonna do what I can not to ever have to do that again, or at least not for another 20 years.
Student Loans
My mom just nonchalantly handed me a Christmas card with a check in it for $35,000. So I put it in a safe place, then during my lunch hour on Monday, I deposited it. They look at you with suspicion when you walk in and hand them a check that large. Needless to say, they put a 48-hour hold on it. When it finally went through, I made a $30,800.32 payment to my student loans. I had graduated with $70,000 in student loan debt because my education cost $140,000 and Pell Grants covered only half of it. The only reason I was able to get it down to $30k was because in 2019 I did a cash-out refinance on the condo and put most of it toward my student loans. Those things have been such a thorn in my side because all that did was transfer debt to a lower interest rate loan (my mortgage), so my mortgage payments went up.
However, I have received enough pay raises to cover the increase in the mortgage, increase in property taxes, increase in homeowner’s insurance premiums (because of my claim last year) and increase in HOA fees (which have been insane). HOA fees have gone up by $283/month over the last three years to a total of $673/month beginning January. My housing costs rise almost as much and as fast as a renter’s do because of my insurance claim, rising property values, and previous HOA boards’ failure to raise monthly fees enough to pay for maintenance and repairs.
I guess $1,645/month for a two bedroom with a one-car garage and a pool isn’t terrible for Wilsonville. One condo in my complex that’s identical to mine rents for $1,899, and a two-bedroom 906 square foot apartment where we used to live starts at $1,442 plus water (so about $1,575). They charge $150 extra to rent a garage plus $40 “pet rent,” so that would be $1,765. At my son’s former complex, the two bedrooms there start at $1,567 and they pay for water. What’s really peculiar is that the one-bedroom apartments aren’t much less than two-bedroom. They’re only about $50/month less, making a one-bedroom for a single person out of reach. They’re unaffordable.
Anyway… the payment has posted and my student loans are now paid off.
I revisited my budget and adjusted several things for inflation (except groceries, because my son’s “rent” helps with that). Then I added more to my “placeholder expectation” of future HOA fee increases and property tax increases as well as budgeted gas for the annual Thanksgiving trip and next summer’s trip to the sunstone mines with my dad. I updated the amount I was quoted for a chimney sweep and dryer duct cleaning, and added a placeholder amount for possibly putting into a Roth IRA. I need to research those and get one started. After I adjusted everything for increases, savings, and inflation to be sure I’m accounting for everything except pay increases (worse case scenario, always, because inflation inevitably eats up pay increases), I made sure I’d stay above zero on the cash flow graph.
After accounting for all imaginable expenses, I logged into the US Bank account where my grandpa’s money is kept and with there being $18,720, I decided to move $8,720 into a 13-month, 4.8% APY CD. That leaves me enough for emergencies if I need it for the next year. I still have another $18k in savings at my credit union and I’m toying with putting some of that into a CD as well, but their interest rates are a lot lower and I can’t do it online. I might just do another, shorter one with US Bank and possibly a larger, very short one with the credit union. I’ll have to think about it. Next year I will probably need new tires and a battery, and probably brake pads at some point in the next two years. Other than that, I don’t have any large expenses planned. Obviously I could get work done on the condo, but there is nothing pressing that’s not strictly aesthetic at this point. Not yet, anyway. Nothing is ever planned, it’s always an emergency. I’m dragging my feet on appliances because I don’t like new appliances. I think they’re crap.
All of this isn’t taking into account any major medical expenses which are the stealth financial killer. Those are always unexpected and why I keep so much more in savings than I’d ever need for strictly home maintenance. Auto repairs are second only to medical expenses, and someday my car will be needing repairs, then eventually too old to drive. So I’m essentially also saving for a down payment on my next car, whenever that will be.
I don’t know, I just feel that at this point in my life, approaching 50, I need to start hoarding money. I’m way too late in the game for retirement, and that is terrifying. I will never have enough money to retire comfortably, but I need to save all I can from this point on.
I did Splurge A Bit Though
The big splurge was the necklaces, but the amount over my student loan balance my mom gave me more than covered that. I decided to treat myself to a new record player. It’s nothing fancy, just a $60 suitcase Victrola with built in speakers from Amazon. When I was at my mom’s she brought out some of the old records my grandpa had collected. She sold a bunch but kept a select few. She didn’t have a player before she took them home, so she bought one from Amazon and we’ve been listening to them when I visit.
I thought, “I want to listen to old records too!” I don’t have any old ones, so I ordered a “lot” of 15 used 45s from eBay. Then I bought a couple of new LPs from Amazon, but one is old music. I want my collection to remain small because I don’t have much room for storage and don’t want to spend a lot of money. I want at least 95% of it to be music that was made and popular back in the days of vinyl, before cassettes. I ordered a Peter Paul & Mary album, B.B. King, and those 45s are old (50s, 60s, 70s) records from a jukebox. The one new one I got was Melody Gardot, “My One and Only Thrill” released in 2009. Her voice deserves to be heard on vinyl, dammit.
I want a mixture of Blues, Jazz, Classical, 50s Doo Wop, and Trip Hop. I know Trip Hop is newer, but I want Portishead (Dummy) and maybe even some Massive Attack (Mezzanine) on vinyl because they both have that old scratchy sound in some of their music. I have some Blues now and the rest is on the way except Portishead and Massive Attack. Those records are so expensive, I’m having a hard time pulling the trigger on them. They’re cheapest on Amazon, but the two records I’ve bought on Amazon skip a bit either due to static, dust, or poor quality (I ordered a cleaning kit, so we’ll see). The B.B. King one is also slightly warped. Judging by the reviews I’ve read, it’s most likely poor quality pressing and warehouse storage. So I’m going to forgo Amazon for vinyl and stick with eBay or go with another online seller. I will just have to wait a month for them to show up because they’re halfway around the world. “What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time.”
My Newest Addiction
It’s always something. For years, it was cigarettes. I quit those, then ever since, it’s been sugar. In 2020-21 and even some of 2022, it’s been a little too much alcohol. I’ve cut way back on that, and now it’s cheese.
Yes, cheese. I’ve been branching out, trying new cheeses from the deli department at Fred Meyer. I think I mentioned the BellaVitano, and that is still my favorite. This week I tried two kids of Gouda. That is also delicious. I took a block of Black Truffle Cheddar to my mom’s and it was a big hit, but the lady behind the counter at the deli said they don’t get it very often. They haven’t had it since. Cheese can get very expensive, so once I’ve tried the ones that don’t scare me (not keen on anything goat or sheep), I’ll cut back. I’m lucky in that I can easily kick addictions and honestly don’t get truly addicted to anything (except sugar). In my early 20s I tried hard drugs and although it was fun at the time, it didn’t stick. That’s a good thing.
Pain and Insomnia
I’m actually considering heading to a dispensary soon and getting something really mellow and low on the THC to help with my menopause-induced insomnia and the pain I’m always in with my degenerative disc disease. I’m thinking gummies, and trying them when I’m off for a few days around Christmas time. At work they are finally allowing people who aren’t in “safety sensitive” positions to partake; meaning, they’ll still do random tests on all employees for everything, but if you’re not operating heavy machinery, they’ll look the other way on a positive test for THC. I was told this by someone in HR before Covid, but now it’s in the employee handbook, in writing. I just never have because I’ve been so worried about testing positive, but the pain and sleepless nights are wearing on me. I know for a fact I need neck surgery, but my insurance won’t cover disc replacement, only fusion. I’m putting that off for as long as I am physically able.
Ok, that’s all I have for this week. I am not giving up on the memoir, I just haven’t had time to work on it. I was only gone for four days for Thanksgiving, but that translates into a week’s worth of catching up on chores. Thankfully I have Christmas free, although I won’t be taking any extra PTO. I’m saving that for spring and summer this time. I am taking December 21 and 22 off, though, just for shits and giggles. I’m gonna go out and watch the sunrise on Winter Solstice. Maybe I’ll do some snowshoeing. If not, I’ll just curl up on the couch with some wine, cheese, my new record player, and a fire log. And possibly something to help me sleep. I can’t take Benadryl every night; antihistamines are known to increase the risk of dementia. With my family history, I can’t take that chance.
And hopefully nothing will come up with the condo that will take up my time. Maintenance and repairs are exhausting, both mentally and financially. But I’m done for now. Next summer, if I have the time and energy, I’ll paint door jambs/trim and replace more electrical outlets. I’ve already bought the outlets and I still have some of a Home Depot gift card I can use for the paint. 🙂
