By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (14)

August 31, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.

Weeks 23 and 24 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Week 23, Day 157: JB was really excited for their first day of school. I am really hoping things shift but it bothers me greatly that their teacher keeps harping on how she wants to see them back in the classroom “soon.” It makes me think that the teacher isn’t taking this seriously enough and that she’s getting their hopes up which is rather cruel when we have no idea what’s around the corner. These kids have been through five months of COVID and it feels like she’s dangling bait in front of them with this “soon” commentary. I hope she stops.

I don’t know if this was a happiness hangover thanks to the weekend but despite the numerous challenges of the day, and the Mondayness of the day, I didn’t spend my day infuriated and frustrated as usual.

We had lots of fun on the weekend one day and I spent the other day getting almost my entire to do list done. I finished up all but two items off the remaining list today and caught up on my work backlog.

Things are still grim with various fronts but for the first time in months, a Monday didn’t feel like the Absolute Worst. I’m very grateful.

Week 23, Day 158: Day 2. Oh. My patience from yesterday ran out. Darn!

Second day of school for JB was still only an hour long and I’m starting to worry about whether they’re going to be ready to fly solo for that hour or so starting next week or if I have to sit in on, off to one side, and semi working. That’s not going to be any good if I do.

After one day of Zoom classes, we’ve had a note from the district telling parents not to walk around naked in the background of their students’ classes, or to curse while their kids are having classes (and are clearly not muted). Y’all. You should not have to be told to behave like a grown adult with home training.

We also listed the rental for sale and had almost a dozen showings within 48 hours. I’m astounded. I can’t believe there’s this much interest in buying right now but I am hugely grateful and hoping that this bears immediate fruit. The sooner I offload this responsibility, the better.

Week 23, Day 159: We have one day a week with no instruction. We also had …no instructions on which pages of the homework packet to work on. So, PiC just had them work on a few pages and left it at that.

I scheduled a couple fun class activities online for them, and that was a nice break and entertainment for them, not so much for PiC who was overly involved in oversight. I’ve been doing lesson oversight (aka judicious ignoring but being present for technology problems) for the past few months so I’m more accustomed to taking a back seat and avoiding becoming a distraction. He was not. We decided he should try my method next time and see if it reduces the frustration. I know we both have trouble with watching our kid just be a kid with all the attendant bad decisions but we have got to train ourselves to step back and let them make their mistakes and find their footing.

Week 23, Day 160: Oops. I was supposed to register JB for a series of online gymnastics classes but I missed our chance and the classes filled up. Oh well, I’ll look for a different one for our no-class days anyway, later.

I spent this day rotating between troubleshooting and policy decisions, getting my own work done, and attending to 27 household related things (working with escrow for the rental sale, paying bills, paying the rental’s bills, figuring out our next investing moves, some other things…).

Surprisingly, I got a lot of work done despite the myriad of stuff to juggle. Not surprisingly I hit a very rough patch mid afternoon when it all added up to not having time to take a real walk. The fires surrounding us were too bad for PiC to take a run this morning and I was glad the smoke cleared up a bit, maybe thanks to the midday fog layer moving things along?, but I’d gotten my hopes up for going out and just being done with work for the day.

I begrudgingly took a short walk, finished up a lingering chunk of work, and then pondered our investing plans after dinner.

Week 23, Day 161: Things are both moving super fast with the rental and also it cannot be fast enough for me. I clearly let this bother me for way longer than I should have! But I am so so so looking forward to closing, filing all the paperwork and shelving this experiment.

I’ll still need to make some decisions on setting aside taxes and how to redeploy the final money and actually recording everything required for the taxes but that’s part of the mop-up.

I had to work late today because not only did I take the time to go pick up our delayed requested hot spot from the school, I also had to do some financial investigation that had to happen during business hours. I’m considering working the weekend to make up a bit of that time but … I don’t want to. I’m already living and breathing work all week, there has got to be a work free time somewhere. Weekends should not feel like my substitute for vacation, I do not want to fall back into workaholic habits.

Week 24, Day 164: Lots of financial stuff today:

• I recorded our final rent and rental expenses sheet.
• There are several more utility bills to pay after this.
• I went a few rounds of negotiating with refi lenders.
• I received our Swagbucks redemption and turned that into a Target gift card because there are a few things I will need soon.
• I also chatted with Target customer service and found out that I could add an in store receipt in the app to get my Target Circle points.
• Nabbed a dime for submitting a receipt to ibotta.

Week 24, Day 165: Seamus was restless half the night so I’m exhausted. It was my turn to oversee remote school today. It wasn’t great but it went ok, considering. JB was flopping around being “tired” and I was tired and annoyed. But we are training JB on a new system for organizing classwork so we are practicing that organization before and after class. I want them to develop those mental muscles to put things in order at the end of class and at the end of finishing homework so that we aren’t having to oversee every single lesson to be sure everything is done. There’s a balance we’re trying to find between reasonable expectations and holding JB accountable for their responsibilities. They ARE five, after all. They can do some of this.

I am very not amused by the fact that Highlights still hasn’t processed my cancellation of a subscription 8 weeks after my request. Also not amusing: their site saying my password is invalid when it’s right. ARGH.

I am testing a new ribs recipe today, glad I remembered to check the recipe midday instead of end of day because it needed to bake for 4 hours! That would have been an unpleasant surprise at 5 pm.

Nabbed a quarter for submitting a receipt with shredded cheese on it to ibotta. I take my amusement where I can.

Week 24, Day 166:

In a non disaster kind of way: I was on fire today! I …

• managed JB’s asynchronous homework day with assignments, teaching them a cursive letter, and giving them a present to wrap,
• locked our refi rate,
• retrieved and downloaded all our required documentation for their checks,
• knocked down a truckload of work leftover from yesterday plus a good portion of work for tomorrow so I will have more time tomorrow to deal with problems and deal with refi paperwork and MAYBE even take a walk.

Nabbed another quarter on Ibotta for a receipt with bananas. I am starting to suspect PiC is making more frequent small grocery runs to generate receipts for my amusement. Or really it’s because he will only buy a few bananas at a time.

Maybe because I’ve been keeping productively busy in ways that will save us money and relieve my later stress, my today stress levels seem lower than usual. Even when I was annoyed that being slow to lock the rate meant we lost $800 in lender credits (slow because I was doing due diligence with other lenders), I found a path to letting that go. That’s unusual for me but I’m going to embrace it.

I’m feeling quite adequate today.

Course, in contrast, PiC was going out of his mind with his share of parenting. He sadly graded himself a C- for the day. Rough times.

Week 24, Day 167: I managed JB all morning and because I was mentally categorizing all work I got done in that timeframe as a bonus, I was much less cranky than usual. My to do list for household stuff was so long.

• Following up on orders I’d placed but had not shipped yet,
• Placing new orders for things we need for meal planning,
• Signing all the refi disclosures,
• Following up on the problems with the rental (post inspection reports).

I physically felt like absolute garbage by the end of the day. That might just be a cumulative fatigue.

Big contrast between yesterday which felt impossible and today which felt almost smooth sailing despite all the work on both days. It makes such a difference when JB has things they want to do that isn’t making a mess, clearing up and organizing in fact!, and pasting family pictures into a scrapbook.

Week 24, Day 168: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been sitting in the majority of JB’s classes this week (PiC did all last week), and my eye has been twitching half the week.

I keep reminding myself that this is just the beginning of the year. We’ll deal with any real obstacles as they come up, and my annoyances at how this teacher handles the remote learning experience aren’t big enough at this point to be real concerns. I just don’t want the teacher to be the one reinforcing bad habits already! Patience, patience, patience….

I submitted the last requested document for the refi and went back and forth with the broker about the repairs requested from the inspection. We have a game plan for that so I’ll let him do his job and deal with my own stuff. There’s plenty of that! Meal planning, and  actually doing the cooking. Getting a school and craft station organized so JB can have a set area that’s not ALL OVER MY HOUSE. School forms to fill out. Checking in with PiC on his progress with the yard project.

But as 6 pm rolled around, it looked like we were going to make it to the end of the week intact and that’s no small beans.

Then we heard about Chadwick Boseman’s passing and that hit incredibly hard. I don’t pay much mind to celebrity news but some people transcend that, they’re real to us in ways I can’t quite describe even if we’d never meet them, like Carrie Fisher.

As a lifelong comics fan, seeing him bring to life one of our beloved iconic figures in fiction, in this (horribly racist) day and age, so powerfully and humbly and skillfully, surrounded by an incredible cast, was a hell of a thing. I watched and listened to Black Panther on repeat for weeks while I worked. He’s done a lot more work than that, of course, but this was the movie where I “met” him and it was so deeply meaningful in so many ways.

My heart is heavy with this latest loss.

:: How are you doing?

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