By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (95)

March 28, 2022

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 3: As promised, the Things Got Even Harder edition!

Challenge 1: 3 hours of sleep, y’all. Painsomnia had me deep in the marrow and it burned until 3 am. Of course, right when I finally drifted off, Smol’s white noise app, which runs on an iPhone so old it’s literally splitting apart, shut off and up popped Smol like a chirping jack o’lantern. I fixed it and went back to bed quietly cursing, and finally slept at 4 am. Fab. U. Lous.

Perfect way to start an incredibly hard first day of a tough week.

Challenge 2: PiC had to go on site for work today. That left me with Smol most of the day. So naturally….

Challenge 3: Smol woke up after a 45 minute nap sobbing fit to wake the dead. I’d prepared myself for a short nap and so I maintained my emotional equilibrium. I sat on the floor with them patting and humming, my butt going entirely numb, waiting for them to calm down. Usually they take about 10 minutes to stop crying and then signal they’re ready to get going. Today was weird. Of course it was. They kept kneeing me in the stomach when I stopped humming or patting, so I kept it up, working on my phone as much as I could while also patting and humming. My arms and butt were losing feeling steadily. But I figured I’d enjoy the cuddle however long I had it, it’s rare that they sit still anymore. Then they finally sat up, I got ready to get up, and FLOP. They burrowed onto my left shoulder, right cheek bright red. They’d been sleeping! And were going to keep on sleeping. Alrighty. So they got a catnap laying on me while I did what little I could on my phone. Momentary regret that my phone is too decrepit to have more work apps so I could make the most of that time.

Challenge 4: When they felt ready to get up, it was time to go go go for three hours. Time for food, play, more play, try to cram in a minute or two of work here and there whenever they veered off to do their own thing for a bit. Already tired, this was a particularly rough patch.

Challenge 5: Realizing I botched my own weekly meal / dinner plans by not ordering earlier. They sold out. Sigh. I’m too tired to kick myself. I’m just disappointed. We’ll figure it out.

*****

We took a break for lunch and a walk with Sera, and they both got a few minutes to play in the backyard.

Thankfully PiC was able to get away in time to pick up JB from school, the timing was terrible with the nap for one and the picking up for the other. I crammed in as much work as I could for the next three hours and we would up our day with the kids all together again at the dinner table. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through but we did it.

This nonsense of having them go work on site is so counterproductive and so inefficient. He loses so much time he could be working with random social interactions and having to hotdesk. It just doesn’t make any sense. And so whatever work he couldn’t get done there today, which is most of it, he now has to do at home late at night. This stinks.

Year 3, Day 4: It’s Big (car) Maintenance Day. We had been putting off the big ticket stuff for the past 2.5 years. At first it was because where are we going anyway? Then it slowly morphed into maybe we will replace it soon? But it’s becoming clear that our refusal to pay a massive markup for a new hybrid vehicle means we just aren’t getting one anytime soon. An extra $5000+ over MSRP may be peanuts to Silicon Valley types but that’s not us. That’s real money so we’re sticking to our decision. I hope I won’t look back on this in five years and laugh at how naive we were/are to think we’d ever get a minivan with this resolution. I hope it’ll shake out next year. In any case, now that PiC has to commute again, we need both cars in good order in case I need to take the kids anywhere when he’s out and about. I’m preparation for the bill, I applied for an Alaska Air card to make the most of this planned expands and rack up some miles in case we travel again someday and would like a big stash of miles to work with. May as well kill two birds with one stone.

Smol, of course, felt it was necessary to start the day at 450 am, and only nap for 45 minutes in the morning so while PiC was gone at the mechanic, I was fielding the Mogwai again. It’s a fair trade but rough nonetheless. My arms have barely recovered from yesterday.

I’m incredibly grateful they apparently felt as tired as I did by noon and napped for three hours. That was solid work (and curse at my computer because people will not follow directions) time.

’twas an unseasonably warm day, and I called it quits early enough to take Smol and Sera for a walk while PiC and JB did a pizza run. It’s usually a huge pain to pick up take out on a weekday but we both stopped working early enough to make it work.

*****

Smol’s habit this week is knocking on their head with their tiny fists like they’re a bongo drum, and I don’t know what that’s about.

*****

I don’t know what reminded me of this but I recall once three years ago when I felt like we vastly overstayed our welcome at a kid’s birthday party because the kids (JB and the birthday kid) were still having so much fun and I’m writhing at the memory. The hosts didn’t Why does this stuff stick so deeply and why can’t I shake it? I tell myself it’s so far in the past and we’re never going to see those people again but still the embarrassment is alive and well. Well this was a timely Twitter thread of hilarious.

Year 3, Day 5: The car repairs were done yesterday so PiC was back out on another two hour round trip to swap the loaner for our car. I spent that time cramming as much work in as I could before Smol’s sub one hour nap concluded with a spectacular mess. They managed to take off their FULL DIAPER and … Gross. I had to scrub them in the shower and launder all their bedding and soft toys. Soooooo that was fun.

PiC rushed home to take over so I could rest. Er, “rest”, aka, eat lunch, drink water, get back to work, answering all the questions, the usual. I have an extreme amount of logistics bouncing around my brain these days and it’s going to be this way for another few months as we crosstrain and I figure out the staffing needs.

I usually take the kids for a walk midday but now that I think about it, I don’t think I stepped foot outside again after this morning’s school drop off. This morning is a far off haze already… PiC and I split the post-second nap coverage with Smol. I happened to wrap enough of my time sensitive stuff to give him an extra hour so that he could go to bed at a decent time.

In the kitchen: I’d foolishly defrosted two packages of baby cuttlefish (should have just started with one!) and threw them into the pan with some fried bacon for a simple dish without other seasoning. I was trying to keep it Smol-friendly. To my shock, they actually ate several pieces! Texture wise it was cooked perfectly. Tender and not at all chewy. I oven baked some salmon to go with our soba noodles and tofu, too, and of course after a marathon cooking session I don’t want more than two bites of my own cooking. It never made sense when my mom did that and now it does. Have I officially turned into my mom? I sneeze like her, I drink water like her, I don’t eat my own cooking like her.

Naturally Smol was a complete turkey for the other parts of dinner. So much screeching.

JB thought they were cuddlefish and declared them their favorite fish. But after we clarified the “t” not “d” spelling, they were lukewarm on the whole deal. Figures.

Three days down! We’ve got another tough schedule tomorrow but we’ve made it through 3 of 5 days. And that’s something.

In happy news, my little sister is dropping by next week and I get to buy her a birthday cake and ply her with as many favorite desserts and foods as I can in a 4 hour period which is exciting.

And April is right around the corner bearing the hope of some under-5 vaccine data (?) soon (?). My hope is surrounded by question marks.

Year 3, Day 6: Yesterday felt like Friday. It was not. Today really feels like it should be Friday. Still nope.

Babies are BRUTAL. And our recessed lighting is possessed. Which all means we were woken at 430 am. No bueno, no gracias.

Smol was back in their crib by 645 am, not in fact able to hang, but sat around like a zombie for an hour before laying down to rest. It was a very strange morning for them. While they were figuring out what the heck was happening, PiC had an inhumane 8 am meeting and had to go on site afterward so I was in charge of dog walk and kid drop off and working as fast as possible for as long as I could before they were up.

This schedule is slowly destroying our will to live and it hasn’t even been a week. It’s probably worse because of all the freakishly early morning wake ups. Thanks for nothing, Smol!

On the other hand, we’ve made through four days and we just have one more day this week. We can do this, right??

On that same other hand, thank goodness I started that crockpot Kahlua Pork yesterday. The cabbage went in last, today, and an easy crockpot dinner for today is just what the unbelievably tiring day ordered.

Year 3, Day 7: Changing the possessed lights in our room or giving Smol their fuzzy blanket back or some other completely random thing meant they slept until a glorious 7 am.

I’m so grateful. We needed that sleep and it’s never certain we’ll get it. Plus it’s always a rough cycle: when they get bad sleep, then they have bad naps. Sometimes the other way around, though.

I fought to keep my shoulders from touching my ears all day as I forced myself to hyper focus and plow through yards and yards of work. The master plan is to get through as much work as I can early in the week and take a day off. Maybe even two! Some work will be covered while I’m out but if I do a good job of working ahead, I’ll leave my backup with not too much to do and a much better chance of not coming back to a disaster. My stomach still clenches up every time I think about it but the last time I had a day off was prepandemic, maternity leave doesn’t in the least bit count, so it’s well overdue.

Not that I’m going to be doing anything particularly exciting except for actively not working. I’ll be minding Smol so that JB and PiC can go to a sports camp thing a couple hours a day and then feeding everyone as usual. Oh maybe maybe maybe I can finally get a haircut. I’ve been mourning the loss of our family hairdresser who has been cutting JB’s hair since they were one and I just didn’t want anyone else to cut mine. But it’s been over two years since we last saw her and over three years since my last cut and this hair and I truly must part ways.

*****

Can you believe we’re in the last stretch of March? I was wondering why I needed my April budget set up already and it hit me that we’re just around the corner from April. A week away, in fact. Whew. It’s a real time warp around here.

:: Does Spring Break figure into your lives this year? Have you had any time off yet in 2022? When was your last haircut?

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