January 6, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (240)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 257: It’s getting so we need a third suitcase for family travel. We’ve crammed four humans’ worth of clothing and necessities into 2 small suitcases and a mini one up til now but it’s time. I’m not looking forward to trying to make a decision about what to get. The last time we got a new suitcase, it was a free one from Alaska Air for breaking the wheel on my older suitcase (Swiss army, they sent me a replacement wheel). That’s just a little too big to be a carryon but not big enough to hold a great deal more. It’s maybe about 23-24 inches compared to the 21 inch.

It’d probably be best to get a standard carryon size to make it easy to use for both air and car travel? Or maybe we need to just go medium checked size to have enough space for us adults and the two kids can use the smaller ones as they get older.

Year 5, Day 258: Good grief what a terrible season. So many of our friends and family got sick and/or injured these past two weeks, I’ve started holding my breath whenever someone texts, hoping that this isn’t another illness or injury. It took me two full recovery days to try and get past the worst of my symptoms which were then followed up by several days of hands swollen up like oven mitts.

It was also a really hard day with the kids. They kept taking turns whining for HOURS until I snapped and made them go out on a “walk until you STOP IT” nature walk with me. There were moments I vaguely entertained notions of walking into the sunset and disappearing. It was nice to just pretend to think about for a few minutes. Unexpectedly, eventually they ran out of whine and tuned into the nature around us. Minor miracles. They picked flowers and rosemary and we made it home intact. Emotionally worn down but intact.

I’ve got brand new white hairs and can confidently say they’re from the kids. STRESS.

Year 5, Day 259: Our last visit of the holiday season was a really good restful one. It’s usually our first visit but I rather like ending the whole grueling ordeal with a comparatively peaceful person to be around. We also had the opportunity to care for a dear friend who was unwell. They’ve so often cared for and about me and I haven’t been around for the past decade to help out when they weren’t well. This time we were able to return one of the many favors. It’s a good feeling.

This week’s self soothing activity: Finalizing all the details our spreadsheets to shift over to 2025. I had to clean up some messes and update our tax spreadsheet as we rolled out of 2024 and into 2025.

Year 5, Day 260: My mail order pharmacy won’t cover omeprazole anymore. They had the audacity to say that “it may cost less to purchase OTC”. For a quick comparison, 42 tabs of 20 mg omeprazole at Target is $18. 60 tabs of the same from the pharmacy has been $8. I knew that they were going to change medication coverage but didn’t know exactly how it would impact us, now I am starting to get a glimpse . It looks like I should (maybe?) still be able to order it online for in-person pickup at the normal price, at least.

Ah-ha, corporations are good for something. SFO is booked solid through March 31 for Global Entry appointments and won’t take walk-ins. PiC’s coworker told him that the company pays for the TTP people to come every so often to handle applications for employees and families so he managed to get the kids scheduled for this month.  We’d like to plan a trip but I cannot do that until all the paperwork is taken care of, it gives me the collywobbles booking travel without the passports and TTP and all that done.

They were advertising a 5x match on donations before December 31, but I went to the KIND site and they’re now showing a 7x match. I’m wondering if that’s accurate. Either way, I made them our first tax-deductible donation of the year: migrant children are going to have a really rough time of it with this administration. The Young Center also does good work on this front. Their Charity Navigator ratings: KIND, The Young Center.

Year 5, Day 261: All those poppy seeds that I thought the ants or the birds took? They were slandered. Many seeds have burst into not-quite-bloom, but germination and grown into green plants! This was a delightful discovery, like a little reward for surviving the holidays. I’m getting some plant therapy in now, pulling the grass and clover that’s sprung up around the flower plants too. I can’t call them weeds without a flash of guilt now, thanks to The Spellshop.

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December 30, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (239)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 250: Spiral cut ham is amazing and makes for some amazing leftovers-lunches. Who knew? If I had a deep freezer (one of my “if we could manage and afford a bigger house” sorts of dreams), I would have hams in there at all times. Dreams.

Also, and this is probably not news but, I cannot be trusted to go to Costco alone. If I’m not getting myself lost (which is most of the time), then I’m picking up that ten pound bag of pancake mix because it’s $4 for 2 lbs elsewhere but only $10 for 10 lbs here! FOOL. What 4 person family needs 10 lbs of pancake mix?? We do not have pancakes that often. I plead holiday / end of year brain. I guess we will have to have them that often to get through this.

Woof. Mostly unrelated: I’m logging our credit card bills due in January and they are double the normal budget. Lots of one-off expenses that added up so fast. I think we can cover it through cashflow but it’ll be a bit tight for a while. Also daycare’s price increase hits THIS month, I forgot. $2400. A month. 😭

I solved the toe blister mystery: I’d worn my cotton socks for a couple days and my precious toes hated them so much they all developed blisters. As soon as my wool socks came back on, they healed up.

Year 5, Day 251: It’s a four KitKat kind of day. It’s cold and dreary out. There’s very little growing in the garden. There is no furry-feet family member to greet me at the door when I get back from a loooong morning of running errands. Or to be snoring and then looking at me through bleary eyes as I tiptoe back in trying not to disturb them. Harrumph.

Speaking of Costco fails: We found Boudin clam chowder in the refrigerator section. I didn’t expect it to be as good as the restaurant when I bought it but then we (uncharacteristically) wandered through an area with a Boudin, had their clam chowder, and now the Costco version tastes flat (to me). I bet it would have been just fine if we hadn’t had some that was better. Taste bud inflation is terrible. PiC likes it well enough but that just goes to show you how easy he is to feed with my less than stellar cooking.

BUT. I put in a big order of snacks for my Lakota sponsee and staple foods for their family. I squared away raises for all of my people before the last days of the year trickled away. Those are the good things.

Year 5, Day 252: I’m doing big time grey rocking with certain people this holiday. I’m doing a good job! I’m not intensely irritated, I am simply a person floating out of time.

Wait no, I am irritated. By all this talk about trying to revoke the FDA approval for the polio vaccine. I can’t tell if they’re seriously this reckless and horrible (yes) or if it’s primarily intended to drum up panic among those of us who have an iota of sense and being reckless and horrible is just a bonus. I don’t know if he was the LAST American (as purported on Bluesky) to have used an iron lung and died, but this just makes me shake my head all over again about how utterly awful these people are: Paul Alexander, forced into an iron lung by polio in 1952, dies at 78

Year 5, Day 253: Do you like shinies? I keep saying that I don’t need any more earrings, but I love them so. Turns out Kythryne Aisling’s shop (I found her on Bsky) has a selection of perfect earrings to fill a specific genre of earrings that has been missing from my collection: small, dangly and tough so I can wear them all the time without discomfort or damaging them. I’d been going through these silly cycles of wearing earrings for some special thing or another and then leaving them off so long the holes would partially close up again (as they always do between earrings) because my preferred earring styles are too fragile to endure me being me. I got myself the elephants, the forbidden candy (they look like jolly ranchers!), fauxfire twisties, and kitsune. As a kid I always envied people who could wear all kinds of earrings. My metal allergies limited me to a very few pairs that wouldn’t cause infections. But now, if I never let them close up, I can wear anything I want! This is an unexpectedly fun jewelery era for me. Also Kythryne has very cute dogs and I appreciate the dog pictures on the skyline.

My sinuses are making their presence Very Known right now and I hate it. They’re angry. My heart rate keeps doing weird things late at night so I can’t get even the minimal rest I normally manage, I keep laying awake later and later.

Year 5, Day 254: A black lab encounter: Neighborhood dog came over for love, of course I obliged, and then wouldn’t leave. He kept looking at Smol Acrobat and PiC with “but you haven’t petted me yet? I cannot leave?” eyes. I gave him extra pets to make up for the fact that they couldn’t come pet him.

Saying this really quietly here so as not to jinx myself: shipping issues have plagued the dozens of shipments for the Lakota families so I was expecting the same for all my orders this month: books, clothes, prescription refills.

Also a nice surprise: a sale of a very old swimsuit (still in remarkably good condition) on Poshmark! I never open the app anymore, I just leave my listings up and occasionally it bears some fruit. In this case, $13 eventually. I also followed up on that money side quest from the Swiss government. Two weeks and that lady had done nothing with the revised information to send the bank transfer. She didn’t even start processing it right away when I followed up. “In a few days” she’ll start it. Cough up our money! They should be required to pay interest on money they’ve held onto for too long like the US government has to when they refund us.

I’ve hit the point in the holiday season grind where three out of four of us are sick. I’m just dragging myself through each day with gritted teeth. Not my favorite but also not super surprised. Everything is topsy turvy this year, our relaxing family time was swapped to the new year and that’s now in question because they are sick.

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December 23, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (238)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 243: For many reasons I feel zero holiday cheer so far. PiC got the tree up, and it’s nice to see the shiny sparkly but I’m just not feeling it. Busy-ness is definitely a factor. Everything (in the world) also feels so much harder than it needs to be. Every day with the kids is a whole lot of struggle. On the plus side, I’m not feeling the deep-seated anxiety that I usually feel around family stuff this time of year. Am I just too tired to? Maybe! But also I noticed that working through things in therapy and I am no longer feeling the anxiety-driven need to pack for these things six months out.

Lack of anxiety – good, lack of energy driven by the anxiety – less good.

It was another struggle today with brain fog and a storm passing through at the same time. Work was much tougher than it should have been.

But lots of packages arrived today! They were the key ones: books and treats I have to pack up by Wednesday for distribution. Whew. I was sweating the books package the most but a few other things were also important.

I hate this for Cloud @ Wandering Scientist. Her daughter caught whooping cough at school and now Cloud is sick too which ruins her plans to shop for presents in person. This reminds me of how much of my life is centered around doing most things 1-2 months in advance because odds are high that I’ll get sick, overwhelmed, or fatigued, or all of the above if I leave important things until near the day of.

Year 5, Day 244: Joe Udo at Retire by 40 has been retired for 12 years already! That really flew by. In his housekeeping post, he said: For 2024, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for those under 50. If you’re over 50 like me, you can contribute up to $8,000. The Roth IRA is the best retirement account because you don’t have to pay tax when you withdraw from the account. Everyone should max out their Roth IRA every year. If you haven’t maxed out your contribution yet, now is a great time to do it. Actually, the deadline for 2024 is April 15^th. But I like to contribute in the same calendar year to keep it simple.

I don’t have any such advice. I had to max out a 401K this year, and we haven’t contributed to our Roth IRAs for a few years. I stopped contributing to the traditional IRA as well since I wasn’t getting a tax benefit from it and didn’t want to be constrained by RMDs in all our accounts.

I threw together our New Year cards and ordered them today. It’s too late to get them in the mail before I’m steamrolled by the holidays, but that doesn’t matter! Because they’re New Year cards and can go out in January! Go me, planning ahead for potential failures for once. And buying them at 60% off for a custom design at Office Depot made them much more affordable. Updates to farflung family and friends are nice, better when it doesn’t cost $200+. Plenty of people use Minted and other fancier services but it just doesn’t rank that high in my spending plans. I have to conserve our dollars for direct aid to folks (Larime, Linda Tirado) and others.

Year 5, Day 245: Smol Acrobat has been wandering about like a cranky old fogey grumping out of the blue, “but I wanted sushi!” every few days. They never tell us they want sushi at any point where it would have done any good, mind you, they’re just rolling up with a grievance while we’re putting together dinner as if we’d taken a poll and rejected their ask. Strong reaction from the kid who only eats cucumber rolls! I should give them a bowl of slivered cucumber on rice with a side of nori and see if that solves the problem.

Year 5, Day 246: I was reviewing Smol Acrobat’s doctor’s visit notes to find their height, I’m trying to get their Global Entry applications ready, and was very pleased to see that the doc recorded my request for a 6 month booster of the COVID vaccine next spring and approved it. I appreciate it when people listen to me and do what’s necessary without having to be told twice!

The GE application process is a total pain right now though. I had to change a detail for JB but I can’t do it myself, I need them to. Six emails in, they’re still insisting they changed it already and I’m sending screenshots of how they changed it (incorrectly) in one place but not the other place so I still can’t move forward. My “thanks for any help you can provide” is getting more and more sarcastic with every repetition.

My nightmares are back even though I’m still taking the prazosin. They’re not as intense as they used to be, yet, but still decidedly impactful. I usually remember the dreaming when I wake up pretty clearly but this one lingered all day: we were in small boats crossing oceans and meeting people we sort of knew in some faraway unknown places. I suspect it came from a pondering on the diaspora of boat people from Vietnam and how my cousins 20 years older than me lived that and remember it clearly.

Year 5, Day 247: Our car insurance went up 18% in the summer, and I just got the notification that it’s gone up again another 15%. What the hell??

Also annoying: I have blisters or blister type pain on almost all my toes today. The tops, sides and bottoms, variably. What did I do wrong now?? I asked each toe individually, why are you suddenly such a bad neighbor? I gleaned zero satisfactory information from this interrogation.

Searching the internets, specifically Mayo Clinic since general Googling is useless these days, didn’t turn up anything super useful but it did teach me about Bullous pemphigoid. Things could be much worse, is what they’re telling me. Still, having pretty much all toes hurt isn’t great.

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