Always about to jump

(into something new) Splitting time between NYC and the Catskills.

[on-the-precipice]

My cousin moved out a while back but he rightfully sensed that I was having trouble pulling myself together to find a new roommate to help cover expenses, so he came over tonight to help me clean and take photos. Anyone that will walk in and plunge their hands into your kitchen sink of dirty dishes, no questions asked, is a hero to me.

But also. I have found that needing help makes people feel like it is okay to give overbearing advice, and that wears me down.

After cleaning, he sat down and told me that better times are coming, etc etc, and that I needed to “manifest” a better future. Hmm. He said, “Like me, back in January, I was in a really bad state for six weeks.”

My dude. You were living here so I saw it and it barely registered to me—six weeks??? That was it? And what, you were gonna kill yourself on the seventh week?

I thanked him for his assistance and said I wanted to make an early night of it.

[on-the-precipice]

My ex appears to be vacationing in Puerto Rico again while unemployed. I genuinely wonder if he is having a mental breakdown.

[on-the-precipice]

Okay, I was wrong. The beach I saw was a virtual background to amuse Skip. When I saw it the second time, it was glitchy enough that I realized it wasn’t real.

[on-the-precipice]

I am hunkering down and avoiding going out in the heatwave. One of my neighbors is definitely having sex right now. I can hear rhythmic squeaking of bed springs.

[on-the-precipice]

LOOK at this cat. His fur is so thick, he would be better suited for the Arctic.

[on-the-precipice]

My ex appears to be vacationing in Puerto Rico again while unemployed. I genuinely wonder if he is having a mental breakdown.

[on-the-precipice]

There are some limited electrical blackouts so the local power company sent out a notice that they are handing out blocks of dry ice. Aren’t people going to die from this??? Dry ice is just frozen carbon dioxide. As it melts, it turns into gas. Couldn’t people suffocate in their sleep from having dry ice in a closed room?

Anyway I’m grateful the power is still on here.

[on-the-precipice]

I guess the word I was looking for is “irrelevant.” I feel irrelevant at the fundraising job.

[on-the-precipice]

I’m mentally having trouble coming to terms with a certain aspect of my current temp job in the fundraising department of a medium-large nonprofit. There are 7 people in the department, including the boss of the department. The boss is the oldest and highest-ranking; I am the second-oldest and lowest-ranking.

For the sake of an analogy that might be more understandable than my niche field, let’s pretend we are an accounting department for a major baseball team. Six of the seven people have some or deep knowledge in accounting principles and the upper ones can cite tax law very well. I am the seventh and I am a novice at accounting, but I know baseball thoroughly. I am the only one that knows baseball, and having been around a while, my professional involvement with it goes back at least 15 years.

I feel like I have a lot to contribute to the department by virtue of being in the workforce a long time and knowing a lot about baseball. I am a quick learner and I feel certain I can pick up accounting techniques soon. During staff meetings, I have added context and commentary to discussions about financial management as it relates to baseball—“The off-season can be expensive because of training regimens, but there’s no revenue, so we need to budget for that.” “There was a big scandal in the industry in 2010 that affected every team’s choice of uniform suppliers, and we all had to spend triple the amount on uniforms that season.” Maybe I follow up those comments with a newspaper link to substantiate it. Everyone else is like, huh, interesting. (Some of the other staffers were in middle school in 2010 and certainly not following pro baseball news at that time.)

But fundamentally I don’t have accounting experience and I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. It’s not quite that I feel devalued or embarrassed being the learner in this situation; it’s more that the other people have zero context for understanding the value that I have to add to the department. I could be the weaver of narratives that helps them contextualize info for their decision-making, but they are kind of disinterested because they don’t know enough to care. Mostly I come across as a weird middle-aged lady butting into other people’s work conversations when I should be focusing on data entry. And I guess it potentially threatens the hierarchy of the department. But I still don’t know accounting, so I couldn’t possibly be the boss anyway. I don’t have a comfortable niche in the department—my presence is sort of uneasy.

[To be clear, the baseball/accounting thing was an analogy. I work in neither.]

[on-the-precipice]

There are no atheists in a foxhole and there are no atheist single moms when their six year old climbs in bed at 3am and says, “my tummy hurts just a widdle bit” after the workweek has already been abbreviated by three days of no camp and a holiday.

Fortunately he recovered by 6:30 am, when he was demanding cheese for breakfast.

[on-the-precipice]

It is not fun to be a bit chubby in a heat wave. It is like my internal organs are wrapped in a down blanket, and I am sweating commensurately.

[on-the-precipice]

Damnit. I am being nickel and dimed by the frigging court system. I have to complete my “divorced parenting” class by a certain time or pay a fee to reactivate it. And of course I’ll be at work today so I can’t do it.

[on-the-precipice]

Okay alright now, 3 days/week, I am processing donations to a nonprofit. My anecdotal observations:

1. Wealthy people know so many ways to avoid paying taxes. I think a wealthy kindergartener knows more about tax law than a middle-income retiree. Every week, I find myself googling something new—“tax benefits of a Donor Advised Fund” or “avoiding taxes by donating stock.”

2. Wealthy people appear to adhere to stronger gender roles than middle-class people. Rarely do I see a higher-dollar-amount donation from a couple in which the two partners have different last names. Phrased differently—a wealthy woman is more likely to take her husband’s last name rather than retain her maiden name.

[on-the-precipice]

Well, 2026 has proven thus far to be pretty terrible but this is a glimmer of something good. My step count plummeted in the year after I had Skip, and I have struggled to raise it again. (It doesn’t help that I seem to have some post-COVID lung damage that makes me feel like I’m drowning during physical activity.) This is the highest average daily step count I’ve had since 2018.

[on-the-precipice]

Sometimes I sing to myself, “Get the nose with it! All that goes with it! Tits and ass! Won’t get you jobs unless they’re yoooooours!”

[on-the-precipice]

Lawyers, paralegals, and anyone who has ever been involved in a divorce—

I feel like my best bet at this point is a negotiated settlement with my ex. And it looks like I’m going to be the one to negotiate it, since my lawyer is a mess. (And that is putting it generously.) And I have no money.

I wrote to my ex on Friday and asked him to name a number. He replied and told me instead to name a number to “buy [him] out of his share of equity in the upstate house.” He clearly doesn’t want to anchor the negotiation. I don’t believe he has equity in the house but I want to give him shut-up-and-go-away money.

My current calculation is this:

A. Appraisal value of house

MINUS

B. Cost to replace crumbling concrete foundation (which is substantial $$)

MINUS

C. Remaining mortgage principal at the point we separated

MINUS

D. Amount I have put into capital improvements since we separated

MINUS

E. Half the money he got from selling our car

—————

F. Subtotal

Divided in half*

————-

E. = Final amount

——————————————————————-

What am I leaving out or forgetting here for things I need to subtract? Keep in mind he already derived substantial value from the home, relative to the rent we received from tenants.

Do not say, “Fight him tooth and nail until you win!” unless you are going to Venmo me the legal fees to undertake that. I need pragmatic advice for negotiating a settlement, not platitudes about sticking to my guns.

[on-the-precipice]

My divorce lawyer is messing up badly.

He is also working for free because he is a friend of a friend. Ultimately, I appreciate the charity but he is overburdening himself and missing deadlines and making predictable mistakes. I need to find someone else or I’m going to end up owing an insane amount of money in this divorce because of my ex’s false claims to the court.

[on-the-precipice]

I mean, this time it wasn’t so bad because I caught it, but I don’t know what he is missing that I’m not seeing.

The court ordered that my ex and I each fill out a statement of net worth a few months ago, and then that same court ordered listed today as a deadline for submitting other documentation. Documentation about income and assets, or documentation about the contested issues? I kept asking my lawyer and he kept not responding. Finally he said it was for another thing that I didn’t need to worry about. Turns out, he was wrong, it was documentation of income & assets. Good thing I didn’t believe him and downloaded most of it already and put it into a Google Drive!!

I did an hours’ worth of frantic work this morning to download items I didn’t get to (I did slack off a little when he told me not to worry about it). I don’t have time to get everything together but I have the bulk of it so I sent him the drive link.

I also started looking for a nonprofit that helps low-income women with divorce cases. My current attorney is trying to be charitable but isn’t doing either of us any favors by overextending himself.

[on-the-precipice]

My lawyer informed me at 11:20pm last night that he was not able to submit my financial documents to the court’s e-filing system so he SENT THEM TO STAPLES TO BE PRINTED INSTEAD.

I am livid. Every financial account I have—with unredacted account numbers—now exposed to some random employees at staples and whoever walks past the printer.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I took the time before typing this to go to the three credit bureaus’ websites and put in credit freezes on each one.

Jesus Christ. I can’t find a new lawyer fast enough.

[on-the-precipice]

Does my big orange and white cat want to be cradled like a baby?

Yes, because he *is* Baby

No, cats hate that

Voting ended onJun 28