By: Revanche

Pandemic: then and now

August 10, 2021

I was looking at JB and was struck by the sense of how much has changed in the past 18 months. I can’t call this a before/after yet, not with the Delta variant having so recently raged through India and now appearing in California.

With all that’s gone by, I want to record my observations of Jan 2020 to now, a whole year and a half later, before I completely forget what the before times were like.

Current Events

Before: In January, I was obsessively reading all the news about COVID. I don’t think we actually knew that it was coming for us just yet. Though I didn’t truly have the energy to spare, my alarms were all going off about this latest virus and I was starting to hunker down mentally. We were slowly adding to our food stores and I was evaluating our cash holdings. We were impacted by the shutdown in China at work and I suspected it would get worse before it got better.
Now: I had no idea how much worse. I worried but I truly didn’t know how horribly the US response to the virus would be bungled, and for how long, and how politics would dominate the response to a global health crisis. I’m sick to my soul with how broken this country is. We have vaccines now and a good swath of the country is vaccinated but huge groups still aren’t. We have people in our families who still refuse to get vaccinated and I just don’t get it. The Delta variant is coming through and I don’t know how badly that’ll affect the remaining folks who aren’t vaccinated, whether by choice or not.

Before: We had no idea what was going to happen for school. Daycare had shut down and school was mere months away. I was grateful that we didn’t have to deal with it yet in the early months, hopeful that we’d have a reasonable response in time to have some kind of a school year come the fall.

Now: Wrong. And now we are heading into the new school year with some states going out of their way to put kids at risk (Texas, Oklahoma), and us in CA having to be grateful for scraps like “at least we have a universal mask mandate for the moment but that could go away too” and not having any good alternatives if we have vulnerable family who are higher risk. This. Sucks.

Family

Before: We were a 3 human, 2 dog household.
Now: Smol Acrobat burst onto the scene and is growing by leaps and bounds. I’m both glad I know that things will keep changing rapidly and stunned by how quickly it flies by once the hardest parts are behind us. How do we have a small baby that can eat solids and sit up and try to crawl already? Soon after, we lost our sage and wonderful Seamus.

Before: JB was a fresh minted 5 year old that needed ALL THE ATTENTION. Play with me, play with me, read to me, draw this for me because I can’t do it, very much attached to PiC, meh about me. They were loving swim lessons and playdates, and the birthday parties I had no interest in. They still had a lot of little kid features. Their fondest dream was to go to kindergarten.
Now: We have a seasoned 6 year old that can still be quite attention-needy but ALSO can: do chores on their own initiative, draw a whole boatload of cute things, read chapter books, ride a bike, ride a scooter, push a stroller, get the dog to obey simple commands (come, sit, lay down, leave it). They are forming lots of opinions, reflecting tons of things that we say back to us, sometimes in thoughtful ways and sometimes not. They’ve achieved a level of confidence with their art that I love to see, and they’re learning to type, to write more legibly and to compose their own correspondence. The changes in their hands and feet strike me the most. They’ve always been tall by comparison to say, me, but seeing their hands lengthen into real kid hands and lose that little kid chubbiness is really startling. They used to daydream constantly about what it’d be like to have a baby and now that reality is here, they’re thoroughly enamored with their baby sibling. They’re looking forward to first grade; their kindergarten teacher sucked most of the joy out of their first experience of school so we’re hoping for a better teacher this year.

Before: I was climbing the walls worrying over how to handle the shift from full time daycare with 12 hours of coverage possible to a school day schedule. The only aftercare we knew about, that was affiliated with the school, was by lottery and oversubscribed many times over.
Now: No aftercare? Eh, fine. We’ve been through the gauntlet with fulltime work and zero childcare. We’ve found many ways to remotely connect and educate JB, and many ways to entertain or let them entertain themselves. As long I continue to work remotely and am physically present, I’m not going to bother fussing with the aftercare lottery.

Before: We had our perfect Seamus overseeing everyone, and goofy Sera who could barely handle her ownself.
Now: Our hearts are sore. Sera is coming along with her training. She can tolerate seeing other dogs sometimes.

Before: PiC was miserable at his job. It had evolved several times over the years and the last evolution transformed the job into a very poor fit. He did the best he could but he was annoyed all the time and second guessing himself constantly.
Now: PiC changed jobs and while he’s still stressed over learning a new job and the workload, he’s in a very different emotional place. I’m really glad for him.

Before: I sometimes felt like I was losing my grip on the reins at work. I probably wasn’t really, but I didn’t feel like I had my arms around my team the way I wanted to for them to be well supported and operating efficiently and effectively.
Now: Being on leave reaffirmed my value at work and reaffirmed that I no longer value my work as a high priority in my life. An odd juxtaposition.

Before: I hadn’t had a haircut in about a year and I was too lazy to get it cut in January when PiC and JB went.
Now: I haven’t had a haircut in 2.5 years and I’m still definitely too tired, busy, and lazy to get it cut. My hair is two feet long. I’m only five feet tall. This is getting awkward. At least I think it’s hit the maximum length it’ll grow. If it kept growing, I’d be in danger of being an imitation Rapunzel.

Before: We’d had a long visit with family and friends, I was socially tapped out and physically extremely fatigued. The physical fatigue had pushed me to despair. Thankfully my mentor gave me that final nudge I needed to seek help with my health through therapy.
Now: Therapy has been transformative for my mental and physical health. It’s not a cure and it’s not banished all pain. It’s simply eased my suffering in wholly unexpected ways. It’s also challenged me to my core.

Household

Before: We used to run the dishwasher if we had hosted a meal with company or maybe once a month to make sure it got used.
Now: We run the dishwasher 2-3 times a week.

Before: We had strict one hour of TV on the weekends only rule.
Now: We joked that the rule went out the window. We sometimes allow half an hour of TV on the weekdays and an hour every weeknight after dinner. They were obsessed with it for a while but we’ve always enforced the rule about balance – there’s no binge watching. 3 episodes of something max, then move on to something else. We made a few mistakes letting the TV time run a little long, and sometimes it was for my survival, physically but JB’s intense obsession has worn off. They love watching still but it’s not the end of the world if we veto it some nights. We were starting to think of how we’ll pull back but I’m sure that some of it will just happen naturally as they start getting back into school and activities.

Money

Before: I was definitely sick of the mental chaos from the rental property. That disruption was probably contributing to my sense of unease. I really hate feeling like I am not making the best possible choices for our family.
Now: I’m still VERY glad we sold the rental. I could not imagine dealing with that mess on top of everything else.

Before: I was stockpiling cash.
Now: I’m making myself let go of part of the stockpile and even finally set up auto-investments to our brokerage. I missed out on a good deal of growth last year because I was worried about the stability of our jobs. My risk assessment at the time was that we had no idea whether either of our companies were financially stable enough to weather the unknown that was ahead of us without layoffs. It was a good surprise that both our companies had done a good enough job of saving and investing that they were able to take the hit of 2020 without cutting headcount. I won’t make our financial plans based on hoping that key people at work aren’t incompetents or fools but so long as the current leadership remains in place, it seems safe to assume that they will probably still make similar kinds of plans going forward.

Before: We were paying for full time daycare for an older child and money felt TIGHT.
Now: We’re getting ready to pay for part time daycare for an infant and as I’m getting ready for that line item, where the heck all our money has been going?? Yes, I do know what we spend on but I still can’t believe how fast it adds up.

:: I’m sure I’m forgetting things. What’s on your before / after?