Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (191)
January 29, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 300: A thunderstorm roared through last night. We would have slept right through it like cozy babies but Sera needed a quick outing at midnight to make sure her bladder wouldn’t be too stressed this morning (because of her steroids). You should have seen the look she gave me. You want ME to go out in THAT??
Anyway, that was a necessary soaking because at 7 am sharp she was click-clacking to the front door because she needed to go out again. It would have been much worse, and earlier, if we hadn’t gone out at midnight. As tired as I was, it meant that everyone got up and out on time for the first time in weeks.
The kids have been generally cooperative for the past couple weeks. It’s weird. There are the usual hiccups and temper tantrums and all that but it’s on the very mild end of the range. I have to hold on to the memory of this when we move into the next phase of very uncooperative.
A loved one is going through a medical thing right now. Not quite a crisis but it could be one if their body doesn’t respond to the medications. Something like Sera, I suppose, except their medical issue currently has a more clearcut set of pretty dire consequences if they don’t respond to the medication route. I’m checking on them daily and worrying in the back of my mind.
Year 4, Day 301: The grief receded briefly yesterday, and crashed down again today like a weighted blanket of fatigue, sapping my energy and will to even move. I know this is how it works, it comes and goes but that unpredictability is tough to manage.
I dropped off JB and just couldn’t dredge up anything but hollowness. Then the universe put the neighborhood border collie on my path and she was SO DELIGHTED to see me! I knelt down to give her skritches and she wiggle-waggled all around so that I could get every bit of her and then ran across someone’s lawn to find something, *ANYTHING*, to bring back and threw a leaf to me and went into play crouch willing me to throw it for her. “C’mon! Throooowwww itttt!” I needed that. I also got a real twinge of empathy for border collie owners who LIVE with those very intense DO IT DO IT NOW eyes.
Year 4, Day 302: Venting session: I’m overwhelmed. Work has been piled up around my ears since the start of the year. I make a little progress and then something comes up to derail me. Then, too, every day there are three new problems I have to solve on top of my usual workload. I am almost done with prepping two sets of stock for the two local business opportunities for JB’s art shop but not quite.
Sera’s schedule is very involved right now. The last nine days have been some (but not much) variation on this:
705 am medications, walk, breakfast.
815 am second walk.
1215 pm third walk.
220 pm finished her breakfast, big drink, started in on lunch.
3 pm medications.
5 pm fourth walk.
7 pm dinner.
845 pm fifth walk.
1135 pm sixth and final walk.
Also, in the back of my mind, I’m so frustrated that I had planned to do self defense practice with JB, just 10-15 minutes a night, after the break and I just cannot find that time anywhere. They want to compete again in April and that’s a huge rush of stress for me. I’m trying to figure out how to help them refine their techniques enough to do well. But it’s all I can do to keep us all alive and functional. I simply can’t attend to training right now.
I’m getting only just enough work done day to day to scrape by, on top of Sera’s meds/walks/feedings, JB’s school dropoff and pickups and self defense classes and everyone needing to eat every day. I need a whole other me to get everything done. 😫
I can’t even ask anyone for help. There’s no one TO help. PiC is doing all of Smol Acrobat’s bath and bed routines, dropoffs and pickups (which are MUCH more time consuming than JB’s) and carrying the meal planning burden equally. He also takes all of Smol Acrobat’s night time callouts so that I can get as much rest as is possible.
Year 4, Day 303: In other news: It’s going to cost $900 to revise our will and trust with just three items to change: adding Smol Acrobat, changing our executors and disinheriting my dad and brother to protect the kids from them. Things were more complicated back when we first put it together and now I’m kind of wondering if it makes sense to keep the trust going or not. We paid a pretty hefty amount putting it together in the first place. Anyways the point is that the lawyer wants to know if we want to discuss any further revisions so that’s another thing I need to figure out.
I did design and print out JB’s Valentine’s cards which puts me ahead of the game on Valentine’s Day for once. It wasn’t about saving money, I’m sure the ink I used cost more than the $2-3 they would cost at Target or whatever. It was about my inability to find a design they’d like well enough to be excited to give out.
I started making the kids “dessert cups” yesterday: whatever snack Smol had asked for in those little liquid medicine measuring cups that comes with children’s Tylenol. Yesterday it was a cup of goldfish. Tonight it was tiny “parfaits”: some yogurt and a sprinkling of granola. The novelty of regular old food in tiny cups!
Even though venting changed absolutely nothing about everything that’s stressing me out, it helped being able to admit how overwhelmed I feel. Today was less heavy, less like there was a tight band constricting my breathing.
Year 4, Day 304: Another deep breaths kind of day. I had a long call with Elder Friend to catch up on health issues on both sides and figure out some plans for the spring. She worries about us too much so sometimes I try to control the flow of information a little bit until we’re in a better place. I can’t vent to her about being overwhelmed or she’ll worry even more. But I do have to start doing some research into the local elder care homes so I know which ones are good for when the time comes that she needs to make that move. May that event be a very long way away.
We had a conference call with the daycare who totally dropped the ball and wasted half an hour waiting for us in person. They had set up these conference calls as remote calls! Sigh. That was a half hour I didn’t have to burn.
Then I found a mistake in the month end accounting thanks to a new Excel spreadsheet misbehaving so I had to spend a good part of the night untangling that. I’m grateful this week is over.
But it wasn’t quite.
JB’s class has been working on fractions this week and homework review was rough. They’re really frustrated that they don’t understand while it feels like all the other kids get it. When the other kids are called on, they’re able to answer the questions in class. But JB doesn’t have any answers when the teacher calls on them. When they’re dividing food examples – pie, bread, pizza – they can solve the problems. But when given two sets of fractions with different denominators to compare and identify the larger number, they can’t wrap their brain around the concept that the denominator doesn’t make the number bigger.
We have explained that the bigger number on the bottom means more PIECES that a whole “1” is divided into, so the pieces are smaller. But when it comes time to apply that knowledge, it falls apart. When you ask if 1/4 is bigger or smaller (or more or less than) than 1/5, they think 1/4 is smaller because the number 5 is bigger than the number 4. I don’t know how to bridge that disconnect, and PiC isn’t having any luck either.
There have been tears. My heart aches in sympathy. I remember how very stupid I felt learning algebra in middle school and worse in advanced math in high school. I don’t want that for my kids. At least I don’t want that to be their feeling forever like it’s been mine. Frustration and not understanding new concepts is part of life but I don’t want them to get stuck, grinding their gears, I want to find a way to help them get it.
I hopped on Outschool to try some tutoring with elementary age educators, trying to find someone with a different angle to explain the concept because I’m not sure how else to present the lesson in a way that will make sense. Ideas and suggestions very welcome! Recommendations for good math tutors for this age group even more welcome!
We did fractions with a big pile of pennies! Anything that you have a bunch of where they’re truly identical in size seems to work.
Jenny F Scientist recently posted…New Skill Needed
I’m so full up brainwise that I can’t quite envisage. Did you do pennies as parts of a whole dollar?
No just like for fractions. 6 out of 12 or whatever. It seemed to help that they only come in increments of one, for visualizing what a fraction is!
If you have the $900 it is probably worth it at this point. Getting a new will from scratch from someone else would probably cost the same amount. You’re going to have to change it sometime and sooner is better than later. And unless you’re planning on a third it’s unlikely you’ll need to change it again for decades. Protecting SA is really important.
The whole will and trust was $4000 years ago so it’s likely to cost way more than that to get a new one. I just got tripped up with the “further discussion?” part because oh god what am I forgetting??? But maybe we just make these three changes now to get them in stone and have the discussion later. I’ll ask her thoughts on that at least and see if we can get that part done.
YES. Worry about anything else later! I put off getting a will too long after DC1 was born because they wanted our full assets to make sure we were under the inheritance tax limit, but of course we were under the inheritance tax limit and should really not have put it off.
DH recently decided he needed a new milk foamer ($70 to replace a $20 one) and while researching he was like hm, all these people are saying just to get an espresso machine and not bother with a foamer… but does he get the $300 one or the $700 one or the $2000 one or the $4000 one, because at every price point people were like if you’re going to spend $70 why not spend $300? If you’re going to spend $300 why not $700 etc. And also he got stuck with the paradox of choice. I was like, just get the $70 foamer and decide on an espresso machine later. You can afford the $70 and you want better foam for your fancy coffee now. ($70 is about a week and a half of his allowance these days.)
The changes you need to make to the will are more important than perfect foam on your coffee. $900 isn’t nothing, but you’re going to have to spend it sometime. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
#endlecture
#thankyouforcomingtomyTedtalk
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Current favorite stationery supplies
Re: the fractions.
Sometimes understanding comes *after* ability to do something, and that’s ok. If JB is having difficulty with the understanding part of fractions, it’s ok to focus on the pattern matching and getting the right answer (eg. if it’s in the numerator, 5>4 it’s bigger, but if it’s in the denominator you do the opposite, 1/5<1/4). Understanding can come after comfort instead of before and that is 100% ok. That doesn't mean you give up on understanding, but that you allow them to get more comfortable with getting the right answer before reintroducing why it's the right answer.
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…RBOFood
I get what you’re saying, and I’m trying to figure out how to share the “how” for the types of problems they’re asked to solve for without getting into the why, now.
Does zie know that 5>4? If so, then you can just say it’s the opposite when the number is on the bottom of a fraction (aka in the denominator).
(If zie doesn’t know that 5>4, then that one is really easy– draw teeth for the alligator that is eating the 5. Nom nom nom.)
(With simple fractions, the alligator eats the one that has the smaller number on the bottom.)
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Current favorite stationery supplies
A therapist once told me that grief was work, so grieving was like having a night job in addition to your regular job(s) and life duties. That framing helped me – I had always had multiple jobs and understood that kind of juggling and trade off. Hope it is useful to you too.
You know what, I did need to hear that, so thank you for sharing.
Fractions: it seems to me JB is artistic, correct? So maybe have them do some art projects where they draw two cakes, and divide one into 5 slices, one into 4, and see if 1/4 v 1/5 clicks in that way. It would have to be something where they did not get sidetracked from the answer – maybe just sketching in pencil?
My niblings went through a time of being thrilled by tiny spoons, salt-cellar-sized. Your little parfait sounds so cute!
$900 to be certain your relatives are firmly out of the picture seems like an entirely wonderful use of money.
Re overload: I’m so sorry! vent away.
They are artsy, but so far our early sketches haven’t quite done the trick. I’ve brought out the fraction tiles and suggested that they use them for homework and that seems to be starting to help a little.
I’m still thrilled by tiny utensils 😁
It is well worth it, I’m just overwhelmed by the worry that I’m forgetting something crucial. But I will give myself a short window of “sleeping on it” time and then just commit. I will I will. (Quoting an Elephant and Piggy book)
It’s starting to feel like an endless deluge of overwhelm (pun not intended but also not removed), between the “normal” stuff and the illnesses and then this weekend’s atmospheric river.
I literally cut round ‘pizzas’ out of cardboard and divvied them up accordingly, just to present a visual concept. Many adults (like me) and kids are visual learners. Once my kids realized that 1/32 of a pizza was much smaller than 1/2, we had the breakthrough. Also, I quizzed them at dinner time, especially with real pizza. “What’s bigger? 1/2 or 1/4?” The goal was to have the kids understand that the smaller the denominator, the bigger the pizza slice. Try cutting a round circle into 32 slices though
Cutting cookies into halves & quarters works well too 😁
Hah I’ll try square pizza.