COVID-19

All Souls’ Day, with refreshments.

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(Note: I originally put this up as a Facebook photo and post. Because of the reactions, I decided to expand it a bit and post here for those who don’t do social media.)

Monday being All Souls’ Day, my partner constructed his usual altar to the memory of dead relatives. It’s hard to make out the details in the picture above, but in addition to photographs, a rosary, Mass cards and newspaper obituaries, there’s also a shot glass of whiskey, a cup of coffee, a glass of water, a pipe full of tobacco and a candy bar.

(The framed photo at the top left is of my mother, at age 11 or 12.)

Shortly after I took this picture DF added a Mexican Coca-Cola for Great-Great Grandma Myrt, who hated coffee but adored Coke. It had to be a Mexican Coke because those are made with sugar rather than the high-fructose corn syrup that U.S. bottlers use.

His 4-year-old granddaughter, whom I’ll call “Daisy” to protect her privacy, visited for a short time that morning. A child prone to wild flights of fancy – mostly in a good way – she was immediately fascinated by the idea of “the ancestors.” Possibly that’s because she’s a big fan of the animated film, “Coco,” which features the Mexican celebration of El Día de los Muertos.

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COVID comes calling.

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The other day I mentioned “other stuff” that had combined with website issues and a deadline avalanche to keep me from posting much, and promised an update soon. So here it is: My father, who recently finished radiation treatment for cancer, has been hospitalized with COVID. I don’t even like writing that. Imagine how I … Read more

Monday miscellany: Decision fatigue edition.

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Note: Surviving and Thriving is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

“Decision fatigue” is hitting women hard during the pandemic, according to the HerMoney newsletter from money expert Jean Chatzky. A leadership coach and resiliency expert named Beth Benatti Kennedy reports a widespread issue among her clients: “I’ve never had to think about so many personal and work decisions.”

These women were already busy before COVID-19. Here’s what their lives look like now, Chatzky says:

“In an average day, women are making decisions for their families regarding school, play, meal planning, cleaning, pets, who goes to the grocery store, and whether or not risk for catching the virus should be taken in order to go to an event or have an experience, and all this is being done alongside a paying job for which you’re hoping to have a nice quiet office space in which you can comfortably earn a living.

“If it sounds like a pipe dream, that’s because it is. Because working from home has removed the boundaries that helped separate work and life, women are now working longer hours and are unable to turn work (off).”

That’s some serious fatigue.

 

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Monday miscellany: Single-mom stimulus grant edition.

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Note: Surviving and Thriving is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

On March 26, writer Emma Johnson created the 2020 Kickass Single Mom Stimulus Grant. Since then she’s given away a $500 cash grant every week to single moms in need.

The criteria are pretty simple:

You are a single mother.

You need the money right now.

If that’s you, head over to Wealthy Single Mommy and apply for the grant. And if you don’t need the grant but know of other single moms in need? Please share the link.

This is a no-strings deal, according to Johnson. Having worked with her, I can say if she says she’s going to do something, she does it. No BS.

 

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Holiday shopping in the time of COVID.

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(Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.)

Some 71 percent of U.S. residents plan to go online for most of their holiday shopping this year, according to a new survey from CreditCards.com. Will you be one of them?

I sort of hope not.

Local stores have already been hammered by the novel coronavirus. Some are barely hanging on. If there’s another stimulus check – and even if there isn’t – I plan to do much of my shopping here in town.

Note that I said “much.” A bunch of my gifts won’t actually be physical gifts, but rather gift cards that I get from rewards programs like Swagbucks and MyPoints or from my rewards credit cards.

But I’ll also be visiting some local shops with beautiful and/or practical gifts.

Sure, I could go online for pop-culture items for my nephew and niece, or cash in some of those rewards points for chain pet stores. But I’d much rather head over to Bosco’s or the Anchorage PetZoo and leave my dollars here in town.

 

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Reminding myself of the good.

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The ongoing COVID lockdown and its associated nationwide healthcare and financial woes have left me feeling both detached and hyper-focused.

I don’t care much about anything, yet I worry nonstop about another massive recession (or, dare I say, a depression).

On the topic of depression: I remain very concerned about what the prolonged COVID isolation is doing to my daughter’s mental health.

(This is not meant to infantilize her. Quite the contrary: I’m in awe of her strength. But it’s a mom thing. We worry.)

To make matters much, much worse, I recently learned that my dad has cancer. He is optimistic – and he’s also 84, and aware that he’s had a pretty damn good run – but I struggled with the news.

Taken together, the result has been me wanting to bury myself in reading whenever I’m not working. It’s a handy way to numb my reactions to Just About Everything.

This was once an unhealthy coping mechanism, because the numbing was nonstop. Suspended animation was my go-to response to anguish, and I spent decades in emotional exile. If I buried myself in a book, or took on freelance assignments in addition to my day job, I’d be far too busy to take honest stock of my life and what was really going on.

These days, the numbing is not prolonged. It’s more of a pause than a freeze.

Specifically, it’s me working my way through the bad stuff by allowing myself to acknowledge it. I’ve found that it’s easier just to admit you’re scared than to fight being scared. Yes, my dad is sick; yes, the country’s economy is in a horrible place; yes, I am concerned about my daughter. It all stinks. Now: What are you going to do about it?

On Friday I stopped in the middle of an editing gig to write down the following phrase: “Reminding myself of the good.” Then I went back to editing, knowing that emotional work was likely going on under the surface.

It was.

 

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Get free credit reports weekly.

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Thanks to the economic impact of COVID-19, some people are paying credit card bills and other obligations late. Or even missing them altogether, which can put a major hurt on your credit score.

Coronavirus-related scams are on the rise, and identity theft is a big concern since so many people have been shopping online. The Federal Trade Commission fielded four times more fraud claims in the first few weeks of April than in the previous quarter combined.

We’re all supposed to check our credit reports every four months, through annual free reports from the big three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). But for the next nine months, you can check it every week.

Those bureaus have teamed up to provide free weekly reports through AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s a collective response to COVID-19, whose financial upheaval has led to those late/missed payments, and it continues through April 21, 2021.

However, you don’t have to be struggling financially to want to check your credit report. It’s always a good idea to make sure there’s nothing weird on your report – and it’s not always fraud-related. Incorrectly entered info, such as transposed digits in a Social Security number, can lead to errors.

For example, one time when I checked the report seemed to think that I worked at a credit union in the southeastern United States. Nope, that wasn’t me.

Note: A credit report is not the same as your credit score. But this new paradigm offers help with that, too.

 

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6 ways to save money on cloth diapers.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! A version of this article was originally published Jan. 30, 2014. As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small commission if you purchase using my affiliate link.)

Yesterday I read an article about continuing shortages on things like disinfectants, toilet paper* and diapers. The piece suggested you could make emergency diapers out of T-shirts.

Couldn’t resist that notion, so I watched a YouTube video on how to turn that old 10k shirt into a COVID-19 hack. It sounds counterintuitive somehow, but cloth diapers are made of cotton, too, so it sorta-kinda makes sense.

Note: The diaper “shortage” is likely due to panic-buying rather than a diaper industry failure. Parents see emptying shelves, which makes them fear potential shortages, which in turn creates actual shortages.

It’s also led to a boom in the cloth diaper industry, according to an article in Today. These didies can be super-pricey. It’s a far cry from way, way back in the day, when I paid $2.99 per dozen for cloth diapers. Believe it or not, they were “slightly irregular.” Yes, I swathed my daughter’s butt in factory seconds.

What’s more, after moving to Philadelphia I had to wash the diapers by hand on a scrub-board and dry them on wooden racks. As a broke and exhausted single mom, I could afford neither the time nor the money to go to the laundromat. I hope none of you are ever that hard up.

Cloth diapers really aren’t as awful as people think. These days they’re prefolded like disposables, so you just tuck them into covers (no more plastic pants). In fact, these diapers are so well-made that they actually have resale value after Junior gets toilet-trained.

Yes, there’s a bit of an “ick” factor, but let’s face it: If you have a baby, you are going to have to touch some poop even if you use disposables.

Here’s how to save money on cloth diapers.

 

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