Sunday Post with Berls | Week of June 26th 2022

Week of June 26th 2022

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kim @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

News at Home

I’m going to try doing a one sentence summary of each day moving forward… I realize some of you enjoy my lenghty posts but I imagine some of you would like to be able to just get a quick version. Initially I was going to put the quick version first but it feels like a spoiler for those that do want to read the whole thing LOL! So I’m moved it to the end of each day.

Sunday

Dante woke me up at 8 today, so not too early which was nice. We had breakfast and got laundry started and just started getting things cleaned up. Then Kiko was up and I made him his usual pancake breakfast with bacon. I use a premade mix because we make pancakes every weekend and that’s just too often to be making it from scratch. Well last time I ordered it they did a substituion and I didn’t realize it was one that required you to add eggs and milk and oil… might as well just make them at that point! Plus it wasn’t nearly as good. So I ended up trashing them, making from scratch and ordering a new mix for next weekend.

After breakfast I hid away in the bedroom for a bit to visit blogs while Kiko and Dante played/watched TV. It was nice to spend a little time on Sunday instead of trying to catch up all week. Then I did grocery pickup. When I got home we had lunch and I continued laundry. Then it was time for COYER book club – we had a very fun discussion (reviews are up on Monday this week). After book club I got back to chores, starting with meal prep for next week. I have been really laz on this the last month because of all I had going on so I’m really glad to have solid meal prep for next week. And it really only took me an hour! After meal prep I finished up chores, we had dinner, then it was bath time, picking up the living room/vacuuming, getting Dante to bed. After Dante was down I spent some time finalizing my schedule for the week with Dante in Speech – which starts this week – but without ABA, since I still don’t know when that will start. I got my blog post for tomorrow done but not the rest of the week. I’ll have to finish the rest tomorrow as I still have 1 load of laundry to put away and BUJO for the week to setup… and it’s already 10 pm. I don’t want to get into bed later than 10:30. Very productive day though and I’m hopeful for a good week.

The quick version: I spent the day doing chores mainly and we had COYER book club.

Monday

So yeah… did not get to bed by 10:30. More like 11:30. And then, as I was lying there in bed reading (in the dark) and trying to drift off, I felt something touch my arm. Y’all, I flew. Like Superman couldn’t have caught me. I turned on the light and sure enough there was a roach. Y’all I thought we were done with this! I haven’t seen one in months and NEVER in the bedroom! We don’t have food in our bedroom ever so I’m really at a loss. It was a different kind of roach than we had before too – the ones that had been in the kitchen were small fast ones. This sucker was giant and slow. This is like my worst nightmare. And I haven’t let up – the house is just as clean as ever. I vacuum nightly. We never leave food out. Why?!?! Guess who had an impossible time going to sleep after that? I also felt like I had to triple check on Dante. I can’t abide the idea of a roach crawling on him in his sleep. I’m ready to burn this place down. I really thought this was under control. Kiko is going to have to investigate for me because if downstairs is all infested again…!!

I ended up getting about 4 hours sleep. I woke up and did my workout though and got my day off to a good start. At drop off they told me Dante only had 1 diaper left – they had forgotten to tell me on Friday. So I put in a Target order and told them I’d bring them buy in a few hours. After a quick shower I had my work meeting to start the day – another task has been assigned to me, but I can’t really do it until I get my MacBook. At the meeting, our new manager — new hire as of last week — was introduced and our director (who hired me) asked that those of us in Dallas come in to the office tomorrow so we can all be together and meet him, etc. It’s fine, but the last minute makes me nervous for when I have Dante’s complicated schedule. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. After our daily Scrum we had our weekly engineers meeting (first one I’ve been at) and it was neat to see all 3 teams come together. I also finally have a better idea of who the leads are, which is cool. After that I had a call to try and get my MacBook located — might be able to get it tomorrow when I’m at the office — and then I ran to Target to get Dante’s diapers. While I was out I returned a library book, did an Amazon return, and got gas (all done in 30 minutes).

The afternoon I spent going through some documentation but honestly, I don’t feel like I’m really going to get it until I just get started, so I need my MacBook. I also realized that my W4 wasn’t complete, so I tracked that down. Setup my beneficiaries for life insurance (couldn’t do until after 1st paycheck). Then I called the autism resources line they gave me last time to check on the status of Dante’s ABA. Looks like the first step was completed today. They said it can take 15 days to review but hopefully it won’t. So we’re getting closer. Then I called the main insurance line to confirm everything for Dante’s first Speech Therapy session this Thursday. All’s good, except I’m not 100% confident that they are actually in network. So I sent an email and will follow up. Finally I called my old insurance because technically we’ll have both on Thursday and that’s going to be so complicated. So I’m hoping I can cancel the policy on the 29th instead of the 30th. 1 day could save me a lot of headaches.

The evening was good – played with Dante, watched some TV, cleaned up for the night and getting ready to head to bed. Super nervous though… this roach situation (haven’t seen one all day) has me stressed again. Maybe last night was a weird fluke? *sobs*

The quick version: Roaches may be back 🙁 Work felt unproductive and I spent a lot of time on the phone with health insurance. Again.

Tuesday

So this morning I woke up really tired, despite actually getting 7 hours of sleep. I did some yoga and my morning routine, then Dante was up. I got ready for work quickly (so nice to have a job where I can throw on jeans, light makeup (for me, not them), a nice top and call it a day. Got out the door just a little bit later than I had planned so I was parking when my 9am Scrum meeting started – which is fine, I took it from the car and then came in after. I spent the day trying to get setup on my new computer which had come in. It’s a 16″ MacBook Pro (huge and HEAVY) and we hit obstacle after obstacle. At one point, I was locked out of my account WHILE on the phone with Tech. Finally I have access to my account, but my VPN isn’t working properly – I need to fix that tomorrow (hopefully). Thankfully I still have my Dell for a little while.

Then it was starting to setup my development environment. Well I made a FEW mistakes… first of all, when I setup my terminal in my bootcamp we switched it to Bash. So I thought that was what I was suppossed to do… wrong. Oops. Then Because of the way my VPN wasn’t working correctly I was having trouble installing Homebrew. And ended up copying the same line to my profile 4 times. When I finally got passed the VPN to install Homebrew it failed (because of the profile error). When I asked one of my teammates for help and he started investigating the problem (and he was typing shit I’ve never seen y’all LOL) he was like, “well you have this 4 times…” Whoops! He laughed and fixed it. I told him that in my bootcamp we just copied what they told us to do for the installs, so I’m not at all proficient at the Terminal and he was said “yeah, none of us really are and definitely not when we started. I wish we had it setup where you could just copy paste. It’s a goal, but were not there yet.” So at least they didn’t act like I’m an idiot… I still have a ton of things to install and I’m going to be on my own with it tomorrow… I’ll have to message instead of being in person.

Oh and I met the new manager. He seems nice enough. He was meeting with several of the team – not me, but I think honestly he was trying to learn how they run things and I have 0 answers so that makes sense. He chatted with me for a couple minutes to make an intro. And I spoke to my director a bit while I was on hold for the help desk. Found out his son just graduated from my high school! So same school, 20 years apart…

At some point I also got a call from Dante’s new Case Manager with the insurance. That phone call was such a relief! First of all, she may work for the insurance company but she is (and all the autism case managers are) a BCBA. Which means she has experience working with autistic individuals receiving ABA therapy and she understands it more than someone who’s just filing insurance. She told me that she had sent over Dante’s authorization for a treatment plan this morning and that the next step was for them to actually submit the treatment plan. She said it can take up to 15 days from the time they submit the plan, but she doesn’t foresee any reason it would take that long — We have everything that Dante needs in the file, it’s clear that he needs ABA services, and she has no problem approving the 30 hours they are requesting (up to 40 hours is no problem). She also told me that Walmart’s plan is one of the best – they cover everything with no limits/requirments on min/max hours, age, etc. So there’s really no reason to worry about something changing and us not continuing to get coverage. And she also said she’s there as Dante’s advocate – so anything we need help with beyond ABA she and her team are there to help us. For example, if we decide he needs OT, she will get her team together to identify the OTs in our area that are in network. If we need help with finding a social skills group, ARD meetings with the school, etc – she is there to advocate for Dante. What a relief!

After work I stopped at my brothers for a bit. I had planned on spending more time, but I know work downtown and the traffic is brutal at 5:15pm. That’s a change, thank goodness I’m not in the office often. That would get old fast (traffic sucked on the way in too). Then it was time to pick up Dante, dinner, playtime, etc. The evening flew by and I need to get to bed… it’s already 10. But it was a good day!

The quick version: I’m definitely a newbie at this job… and great news on the insurance front for Dante! His ABA is preauthorized and approval is just 1 more step away!

Wednesday

I got to bed late and knew at bed time that I didn’t ant to have to work out in the morning. So I changed my alarm to 7:00 and got an extra half hour of sleep. Besides the workout, I did do my morning routine and blogging in the morning is turning out really well. After dropping Dante off at daycare this morning, I took Kiko to get his bloodwork from his appointment last week (it had to be a fasting draw). This was cause for celebration – I’ve been trying to get him to go to the doctor for the 17 years we’ve been together and this is the first time he’s gone and done EVERYTHING they asked. He’s just so afraid that the blood work is going to come back saying something is wrong with him and his words, not mine “my life will be over.” Dramatic much? I’m praying his blood work comes back good because if they were to find anything it would be rough for him to handle. I do expect high cholesterol and maybe blood sugar – but neither at a level that is serious, just a warning to eat a little better (Because he really does not think about what he’s eating beyond if he likes the taste).

After his bloodwork, since my computers were still all packed up from working at the office yesterday I decided to just drop him and go hang out at Phil and Zach’s while I worked today. That meant taking my 9am call on the road, but then I was set for the day. At 11 we had our bi-weekly backlog refinement meeting and it was not good. I’ve commented a few times on how quiet the team is and well, my director was not happy about the silence. Early in the call he told everyone “I need you all to turn your cameras on now” which was not a good sign. My camera was already on because I take my cues from meeting leadership. If their camera is on, I assume mine should be too. But everyone was still so quiet. Honestly, I spoke up immediately on the parts that I was involved in (very minor at this point) and spoke as much if not more than some of the established engineers. At the end of the meeting our director said he needed all the engineers to stay on… and then he very basically said that it was not acceptable. They/we need to own what’s going on and be active contributors. I don’t disagree with him. It was awkward for me because I felt very confident he wasn’t talking to me but I was there. It’s like being present when someone is getting in trouble. I awkwardly half smiled through that part. I’m hoping they step it up because (1) I need the info and (2) I’m worried he’ll think the solution is to come to the office and that’s not going to work for me! I do think part of the problem is that our Scrum Master is not leading these meetings well at all. He’s not asking the right questions to get responses, he’s not sufficientl prepared or understanding what’s going on. In my opinion at least. I’m new to Scrum/Agile but I can already think of a million things I’d do differently to have more effective meetings (which is like his WHOLE job). He also schedueld a Scrum 101 meeting because we have so many new team members (including me) and he scheduled it for a day I have marked that I’ll be out of the office! WTF?! I emailed him to see if he could at least record it for me to watch later and he said he’d see if he could. Again, WTF?! So I replied that if recording wasn’t possible could it maybe be rescheduled? Seeing as I’m one of the people the meeting is intended for? GRRR we’ll see.

On a very positive note, sometime yesterday I got an email from ABA that they will start Dante on July 11th!!! They are still in the approval process but based on what they have they know we’ll be approved by then so they’re putting him into the schedule. Yay!! I’m so excited. And shortly after that I heard from Dallas ISD about getting Dante set for school when he turns 3. I have a phone appointment with them on 7/20 that will be about 1 hour to get that setup but she was able to give me some basic info that I can get started with for ABA to plan schedule around. I need to start thinking about our schedule too… but after I get through this next big change. Because starting ABA is going to be a lot of work. Dante’s daycare currently provides all his meals – something we were blessed to have all this time. But I will have to start sending his meals – I’ll send breakfast, lunch and snack. Starting thinking about that I took to Amazon to find the right containers and such. I ended up spending $140! Here’s what I bought (perhaps an overshare but it’s top of my mind so I’m sharing lol):

The quick version: Work was a little frustrating, but lots of celebrations today as my hard work to get Dante setup with ABA is starting to finallly yield results! Dante starts ABA July 11th!

Thursday

I let myself sleep in a bit again today. Y’all I’m just tired! I did get up by 7 though. And then I actually worked on the Sunday Post because I didn’t do it last night. Dante was up early so I was distracted and didn’t manage to do my visiting this morning. When I took him to daycare it was hilarious… they had one of his favorite breakfasts today. So he was running to his seat to go eat and when he saw his plate was empty, he dropped to the ground crying. I started laughing as his teacher said “Don’t worry Dante, you’re going to eat. I can’t have it out or you’d already be eating it before we wash hands!” I’m really glad she does that, but it was hilarious. Anyway…

After I dropped him off, I came home, showered on hopped on our sprint demo meeting. Then it was more working on getting my MacBook setup. I also had a meeting with my director about our team goals that I have to get entered into WorkDay. He sent them to me ahead of time and when I read through them I didn’t know much about what they were saying – so I did some googling and wrote down a bunch of questions. It felt good to be able to really participate in the meeting and also to get some of my questions answered. I think my director appreciated that I had clearly taken the time to read over everything instead of just showing up unprepared too. There were two others at the meeting, one who has a lot of experience and it made sense he was actually helping to answer questions rather than ask them. The other, I don’t know his experience level but he seemed fine. So I showed my newbie stripes, but gotta ask questions if you don’t know, right?

Then at 3pm Dante had his speech evaluation. I was really happy with his new speech therapist. She was super friendly and Dante was clearly comfortable with her. He was laughing and happy the whole time and actually vocoalized more than he normally does with new people. She recognized right away that he’s super smart. She also gave me some good guidance for how we should be approaching communication goals at ABA. When it was time to leave Dante did not want to go and actually threw himself down and started crying. While the fit was not fun, I’m really glad he liked it so much. That’s a great sign. He’ll go again 1 hour next week and then 2 hours starting the week of the 11th.

Then he came home with me and I had about 1 hour of work to do. It was kind of a good trial of how well it’s going to work to bring him home after ABA/Speech therapy and I think it will be okay. I’m not doing the hard work I will be soon, but I also can front load that in my day and do the last arduous tasks once Dante is home.

We had a really nice evening, with Dinner, playtime and bedtime. I’m doing a little bit of blogging and headed to bed myself. I’m trying to not stress myself out by social media with all the craziness coming out of the Supreme Court of late — there’s so much!  — and also just thinking about managing all the changes coming. Just another wave I need to ride (the changes, not the supreme court shit, that I will be fighting)!

The quick version: Work was better today. Dante had his first speech therapy session (evaluation) and it went really well. I think he’s going to do well there. I’m super anxious about all the things!

Friday

I ended up staying up late last night playing Fall Guys with Phil and Zach – it’s free now and you can play across platforms, meaning I can hop on my computer and play with them on their myriads of systems. It was fun and I planned on sleeping in… and once again I just naturally woke up at 6:30. It’s my internal clock and I just need to accept it and get my ass to bed on time!

I did not work out this morning and I didn’t do as much blog visiting as I would have liked… but I did do some. I feel like this morning blogging works well. Then I got Dante ready for school – in the summer they do splash days 1 day a week and Friday is his class. So I had to have him ready for the water and pack a change of clothes. I also had to stop for a Target pickup of Apple Slices (ordered last night) because I had forgotten that today is the July 4th party and I signed up for fruit. Not my best effort, but kids love apple slices right?

Work was good today – I have a project I’m working on to update the how-to document for how we setup our devices. My Mac setup has been really challenging because it’s an M1 Chip and so many of the development installs we use are not supporting the M1 chip standard, lots of work arounds. So as we troubleshoot and get my device setup, I’m taking notes in hopes that the next person who gets an M1 will have an easier setup.

Kiko’s blood work came back today too – and it was mostly good. The only thing that came back was high cholesterol, which I 100% expected based on his diet. The doctor did a prescription but as soon as he saw the possible side effects he was like, “no, I’m going to eat better and exercise!” Y’all I call that a HUGE win and I’m really excited that maybe we will start eating healthy as a family instead of me having separate meals from him (and Dante). So now I’m going to ask my nutritionist some questions and put together a diet for him — I’m really looking at his trans fats that he gets, especially in his oils, but she’s the expert and I know she’ll be able to give me good guidance.

We had a nice night, but I started falling asleep on the couch around 7pm! I will really get my butt to bed tonight!

The quick version: I did not get enough sleep, but had a good day. Kiko’s blood work came back and he has to (not surprisingly) work on his cholesterol.

Saturday

Today was a good day with Dante! He woke up around 8am and we had breakfast. After breakfast Dante was super fussy/clingy – we played all his favorites and he still was fussing, so I pulled out his tablet and Ta-da! Happy boy! When Kiko got up I made his breakfast and Dante had second breakfast (he’s a little Hobbit! LOL). Then I took Dante to the splash park where he had a BLAST. He’s officially not afraid of the water at all and let it hit him straight in the face! So proud of him 🙂 After the water fun we picked up McDonald’s lunch (yes our diet is atrocious right now) and came home for a late lunch. Then Dante was clingy again so I really couldn’t get much done. I ended up playing Fall Guys with Phil and Zach with Dante in my lap for about an hour.  While I was doing that Kiko got a call, so it was just me and Dante for a couple hours. We played some ring-around-the rosy and then I made dinner, which he did not like apparently. But he ate some leftover french fries and some Gerber fruit veggie blends so I’ll take it I guess. Then it was relaxing for the evening and bed time. After Dante was in bed I put in our grocery order for tomorrow morning and I pulled my clothes from the dryer (from last week y’all!), got Kiko’s in the dryer and Dante’s in the wash. We have a play date tomorrow, so I’m keeping meal prep super simple this week. Plus I have Book Bonanza Friday and Saturday this week, so I won’t be needing food for those days.

The quick version: A good, but mostly unproductive day. Dante was clingy but we had fun.

Blog News

Please vote for My TBR List for July! Also Can You Read a Series in a Month ended – be sure to enter the giveaway if you read your series! Oooh and it’s time to sign up for COYER Summer!

Last week on Because Reading

• [27 Jun] Illuminae by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff ★★★
• [27 Jun] The Midnight Library by Matt Haig ★★★★
• [28 Jun] Tell Me Something Tuesday: Mid Year Update
• [29 Jun] Love Notes by Staci Hart ★★★★
• [30 Jun] The Last Mile by David Baldacci ★★★★★
• [30 Jun] The Fix by David Baldacci ★★★★★
• [30 Jun] The Fallen by David Baldacci ★★★★★
• [1 Jul] So – Can You Read A Series in a Month?
• [2 Jul] #MyTBRL Choices and Linky: July 2022
• [3 Jul] Sunday Post with Berls | Week of June 26th 2022

Challenge update

This week I finished:

I’m participating in 7 Challenges, plus the Goodreads Challenge, this year. Here’s how I’m doing.

1. COYER Seasons & COYER Community 2022 –
   1. Winter – 22 books (final count for Winter)
   2. Spring -33 books (final count for Spring)
   3. Summer – 2 books
2. Bookish Resolutions – This was a challenge that Michelle used to do without me and she took last year off. This year we’re bringing it back together. Details on post, but basically I’m setting 5 “bookish” goals for the year: Here are my goals:
   1. Blog ahead at least 1 week. If I get my posts drafted today, then I’ll be on track with this goal again.
   2. Keep a blogging planner. Nope. I have not been keeping up with this at all.
   3. Visit & comment on 7 posts a week. Yes! I think I found my rhythm!
   4. Reply to comments each week. Same as above!
   5. Review books before starting a new book/on the same day – LOL nope. Both those above books I have not written reviews yet.
3. The Backlist Reader Challenge –  34/50 books
4. 2022 Audiobook Challenge –  56/75 books
5. 2022 Library Love Challenge –  20/24 books
6. 2022 Finishing the Series Challenge – My goal is 5 series.
   • In Progress:
     1. Mine by Cynthia Eden- read book 4 & 5 this year, still need to read 6.
   • Completed:
     1. The Ivy Chronicles by Sophie Jordan – read books 2 and 3 this year, finishing the series.
     2. Amos Decker by David Bald Baldacci – read books 2-6 (#7 expected later this year)
     3. Witchless in Seattle by Dakota Cassidy – read books 8-13 this year
     4. Georgina Kincaid by Richelle Mead – read books 3-6 this year (thanks to Anne for realizing I could coutn this one!)

FitReaders (hosted by Jen @ That’s What I’m Talking About & Felicia The Geeky Blogger)

My big goal for 2022 is to lose weight every month. I’m not setting a specific number goal; I just need to make sure I’m going the right direction (down) every month. I will weigh in on the last (or first) day of each month only (so I don’t get too attached to the scale).

My goals for this week were: pretty much nonexistent and it shows…

Weight gain/loss for the year so far:

• +3.9 pounds Feb 1.
• -3.0 pounds March 1 (for the year, so total loss for Feb was 6.9 lbs!)
• -3.0  pounds April 1 (for the year, so no new loss in March, but no gain)
• -7.0 pounds April 30 (for the year, down 4 pounds in April)
• -3.4 pounds July 1 (for the year, up 3.6 pounds in June)

Added to My Shelf

I’m trying to be more responsible about keeping track of the books I acquire, so I’m going to start sharing them again. If I share them here, surely I’ll remember to add them to Goodreads, right?

How was your week? What are you Reading?

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