By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (18)

September 28, 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, $1,886.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.

Week 28 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Week 28, Day 192: I skipped therapy last week and I have to wonder if that lack of release valve adds to my Monday frustration level. I didn’t sleep well or deeply, so that could be the problem too, but end result: I was on edge all day.

It was a two oatmeal bar kind of day and I felt like I was overindulging but it was my sugar free gluten free treat and darn it, I needed a bit of something good today.

Or I could have just been feeling sick because I was fatigued, who knows!

Belatedly I remembered that I’m supposed to work on not blaming myself for every time I feel sick or tired or overwhelmed or in extra pain because that’s both not knowable and counterproductive. Blaming myself isn’t taking responsibility or a means to diagnosing the issue as I’d believed, it was just another way to be mean to myself which causes extra stress and pain.

Sounds a bit woo woo but changing my self talk has honestly helped reduce both intensity and duration of pain flares, which I may have mentioned before, so an attitude adjustment was in order.

For a while now I’ve been playing the worst game of figuring out why I feel like X or Y or Z: pregnancy or pandemic?? And in the end the only answer that made sense was: yes.

Seamus’s eyes, from that long worrisome period where he had a terrible eye ulcer, are finally in good shape again!

Week 28, Day 193: My roller coaster day. Started in a weird mood, and I was touchy about every little thing. Then overseeing kindergarten and having to hear the teacher praise the kids sixteen times in an hour for “being so smart” aggravated me further – hasn’t she ever heard of the fixed and growth mindsets?? Please. Stop. That.

With Penny’s kind assistance on some wording, because I was too irritable to be polite yet, I drafted a diplomatic email to the teacher asking her to focus not on “smarts” (what is that even in five year olds) but on effort and time. We’ll see if she actually replies or responds positively. There are a lot of things about her class that I find to be subpar but I can let them go. Fostering a fixed mentality though, I can’t.

I also don’t love that she keeps mistaking my kid for another Asian kid in the class and scolding them for the other kid’s actions or inactions. We keep an eye on JB from a distance so we know when they are following directions and when they aren’t. We wouldn’t intervene anyway because we know we should let the teacher manage their class, but there have been multiple instances of JB being scolded when they were actually following directions. I’m not quite sure how we’ll approach that but both of us will observe for a while longer and then deal with it.

We had plans for a birthday lunch but I was so irate at all my irritants that I cancelled it: the escrow officer who hasn’t called me after two days of promising she’d call so we can wrap this darn thing up, the person who hasn’t handled their shit and keeps leaning on me for logistical and emotional support, myself for asking people how they are when I simply have no more to give.

It took a long talk with PiC and some friends to dump all the emotions bubbling up. When you’ve spent most of your life, both childhood and adulthood, minimizing yourself, telling yourself that your birthday doesn’t matter because you don’t matter and that at best you’re an afterthought in anyone’s life, being with a wonderful partner who wants and needs to show you that you do matter feels like a messy and complicated thing to accept. Especially on birthdays. I still have a lot to work on there. Even after a good long talk and feeling like I was on an even keel, I had several moments of thinking: see? You don’t matter. Most people have busy lives, they’re not going to remember something like a birthday. That doesn’t mean anything.

But I guess it means everything to my lizard brain that links it to the past 30 years of forgotten birthdays.

Also? I keep getting restless leg symptoms at night and that sucks. I had to search for solutions that weren’t “abandon your legs at the nearest street corner” and moved my heating pad down to my legs. My back resents this sacrifice but it seems to reduce the painful RLS tingles.

RLS has been an intermittent problem for the past 12-18 months and I get especially worried when I have it two nights in a row. My mom had it in a much more severe way in her last years and this reminds me too painfully much of her poor health and pain and struggles.

Week 28, Day 194: Can we all take a long nap today? I’m BEAT.

I was telling PiC the other day that Seamus and Sera normally come and prod me at the right times for dinner and walks when I’m too wrapped up in work. He was mildly skeptical because they never do that to him, they just sort of stalk him. Well, Sera decided to prove me right today!

Dinner was late, so she came and poked him with her nose.
Then when she needed to pee, she came and nose-poked him again.
And to cap it off, late that evening, she poked him again to ask to be tucked into bed.

Thanks, Sera!

Week 28, Day 195: This whole day was full up with digging up documentation for the refinancing (conditional approval WHOO!) and the rental property sale (right at the finish line!).

I got next to nothing else done but the siren call of putting these things to bed was too strong for me. We should be done with the rental sale this week.

We have to wait for a final report on the refi, then we’ll get a closing date!

Week 28, Day 196: There are still a few loose ends (last utilities to pay once the bills are generated) but the rental is essentially no longer my problem.

*glee*

I cannot even begin to say how much a burden has been lifted. I can say I was finally able to make some other time sensitive decisions I simply couldn’t even think about until I took a moment to be thankful I’d finally gotten all the documentation done and smoothed out the wrinkles and hold ups.

I relish the temporary feeling of being flush before the funds go to their respective homes. I haven’t made decisions as to where the money will be reinvested but I set aside a large portion to pay taxes and then the balance is resting in a savings account for disbursement. We’ll invest a lot of it, this was an investment account after all, but we’ll also be giving as well.

We closed out the night completing those things at the last minute which I do not enjoy (the last minute part) and opened up three more chores to get done in the next few weeks. It feels like a never-ending slog getting the house ready for incoming extra chaos but it’s all necessary stuff we’ve been putting off for ages for reasons.

I’m glad that I only did part of my office shelving a few years ago. Now that I’ve lived with it, I understand better what I need. I’m hoping we can install the rest of the shelving next week. That’ll let me get a bunch of stuff off the floor. I need a better solution for my cords and I might have found an option for that! I’ll report back.

We passed our 6 month mark a little while ago but this was helpful

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