Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (242)
January 20, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 271: PiC found our local HMart and got Korean takeout for dinner!! It was SO good. Gochujang, so good. That was the one bright spot for the day. It was nonstop today, starting even before the day began with an 11 pm kid-call for comforting and a 5 am wakeup because one kid didn’t feel well and then the other kid didn’t feel well, and then it was morning and time for questions, emails, checklists, to do lists, questions, chats, updates …. ! It was nonstop with people needing things.
There’s something awful going around right now. This one’s not COVID, flus A or B, or RSV but definitely something that overlaps the same symptoms. I know several people are down with the ick. I hate that we still got gotten even though we mask. It’s not perfect of course, but it probably keeps our infections down to a minimum. Even if it doesn’t feel so best case scenario when you’ve got a kid hurling the contents of their stomach.
Sometimes the state of my brain feels like I can’t learn new stuff because I keep forgetting and then relearning random old stuff. Like the definition of an archipelago.
Year 5, Day 272: We found garlic toum at Costco and it’s amazing (the brand is Toom) – highly recommend. The kids eat so many fresh veggies with it.
I love the ol Donyo Lodge Wildlife Live Stream, it’s so soothing when I’m frustrated with software.
I’m on Week 24 of trainer workouts! And uhhh I am starting to crave some kind of feedback. Maybe this was set off by my doctor’s appointment last week. My doctor (who is the exact same age as me, mind you) commented that she thinks we’re good parents and that she’s proud of me for being self aware and acting on that self knowledge. Having gotten an A in doctor’s appts, now my dopamine seeker wants approval on working out. Tsk. Some impulses are as bad as sugar cravings.
I’m still not reading the Vulture article reporting on Neil Gaiman yet. I intend to at some point, when I have the bandwidth. That said, while I appreciate my friends giving me a heads up that it’s a tough read, it was awfully annoying to have total strangers exhorting me not to read it to protect my peace. You know what, mind your business!
Year 5, Day 273: Our neighbor’s lab is adorable and sweet and hilarious. She walks by our house at least once every two weeks when we’re outside and it just makes my entire day because she wants ALL THE PETS and I want to GIVE all the pets! A match made in heaven. We touch noses and then it’s off to the races: skritches til my arms cramp up. She has that really beautiful thick water dog fur which requires really strong fingers.
I was so stressed by an email at work (it was the opposite of what we needed to hear) it sent me on walkabout through the house so I decided it was time to get my planks out of the way. Now, I don’t hate any of my exercises but do hate that it never feels like planks are getting any easier. I need to do them earlier in the week. By the end of the week, I’m out of time and energy with planks left to do and they don’t always get done. So that email was kind of a lose-win situation.
Year 5, Day 274: JB and I are whining in equal measure about (respectively) homework and work. I’m indulging in excess whining since it’s easier to match their mood than it is to ask them to get it together.
Sometimes I wonder about other people’s finances. In a nosy curious kind of way. We’ve got multiple neighbors with four kids in multi-generational homes with expensive cars and taking expensive vacations (several week trips, international, and theme parks like Disney and the like) every year. I’m so curious about how much that all costs because I couldn’t swing that. We make ok money for here, not that kind of money. Ignore the six figure car. That’s just a “won’t” (even if we could. But we can’t). We priced out Disney last year for a two day pass and almost passed out at the cost. Well over $2000 for the four of us for 1 day. Are we just cheap? Because that seems really expensive. Maybe we’re just cheap?
Maybe the older generation pitches in? In my family the elders are provided for, they don’t contribute financially though they might help around the house. Oh well that’s actually probably the difference isn’t it, they didn’t have to pay for daycare for any of the four kids. At an average of $2000/month per kid, four kids for say five years, they did not spend $480,000 for daycare. That pays for quite a lot of vacations.
Now I’m curious how much we’ve paid for childcare over their lifetimes. If I were on my computer, I’d go find out.
On second thought, best not to.
Year 5, Day 275: You know what I like about Elementary? On my 6th runthrough of it. There’s a pattern of Sherlock growing as a person and however begrudging he may seem about affection in the beginning, truly embracing the value of Joan as a person and as a partner, but there are moments I didn’t catch on in previous viewings like the moment when Joan snaps at Sherlock about his being tetchy with his professor friend and her annoyance with Sherlock who chooses to be alone. He says in this incredibly hurt tone: “Watson?!” but later in the episode, he obviously takes in the point of her upbraiding. It’s a little thing but I liked it.
This, friends, has been an intensely hard week. With sick kids, and intense work loads, our household is a shambles. And I am TIRED.
Part of my stress response to uncertainty is to work more, which is only contributing to the fatigue and stress cycle. Admittedly I actually did need to log some extra hours to clear out a backlog that was going to cause real problems in a couple weeks, so that’s actually a relief but when it’s just about caught up, I forget how to cycle back down to more acceptable levels. I’m waiting on some pretty important answers to very important questions, and it’s not like working myself into the ground is going to do anything at all to change that outcome right now. I need to stop working after dinner, for a start.
Norovirus has been rampant lately, so I hope what they caught wasn’t that! The good news is it tends to be pretty short-lived, just very miserable while it lasts. I hope whatever they have, they feel better soon. It’s reassuring to know that some folks still mask. In my area, no one judges for it (thankfully!), but it’s become rare; maybe 1 in every 100 people I pass in public. Mostly elderly.
Extremely relatable re: wanting approval for everything… our brains are wired to seek validation, but it isn’t always for our own good. My partner and I have started telling each other “good job” when we do mundane tasks so we can get that checkmark feeling, lol.
I hope you are able to get some rest soon!
I heard norovirus is everywhere, ugh. We mask all the time, but yeah it’s much less common now.
We’ve always done thank yous for mundane things, usually that’s enough but times are tough!
It’s been eons since I left a comment…but I had to tell you how relatable the “What do my neighbors do for work?!?!” remark is. We did Disneyland last year–and used points to stay “free” at Hyatt down the road–and whew! It was wonderful, but we saved for more than a year for those tickets. Meanwhile, we have neighbors who go 2-3 times a year to Disneyworld, which somehow seems even more expensive.
I may not know what they do for work, but I certainly know what they don’t do. (Teach. They don’t teach.)
I have sneaking suspicion that Disneyworld is more expensive too and I am absolutely not willing to check. It helps that I won’t go to Florida anyway but yes, I’m looking around and whatever it is they’re doing, it pays a hell of a lot more than what we do!
Norovirus has been going around– if there’s been vomiting that would be my guess. Unfortunately hand sanitizer doesn’t work against it.
You ARE good parents!
The HMarts in the city nearest us are SO NICE. But their 99s are pretty nice too, compared to the ones I’ve been to in other cities. So I don’t know if it’s HMart in general or the city.
It’s ok to want approval for having worked out!
It’s crazy how expensive Disney has gotten. My cousin had season passes to Disneyland 15 years ago (and my MIL took DC1) but I don’t think it was that insane. That seems really expensive.
One of my friends goes to Disney World every other year with her family, but the older generation has some kind of time-share with the disney properties that I don’t fully understand, but they got decades ago. (It must be Disney Vacation Club? Apparently the contract is for 50 years.) The price looks insane now.
Norovirus was our best guess, too, though weirdly Smol Acrobat didn’t get hit. Smol favors!
We’re trying to do better…!
A little bit of validation never hurt anyone, right?
I don’t know when it got THIS expensive. I remember it must have been within the realm of affordability when I was a teen because one of our school trips was to Disney. It was the one and only time I went. Or maybe they gave schools discounts back then.
Wow, I wonder what happens with the contract after 50 years. I thought timeshares didn’t end, you were just locked into them … oh maybe just the prices go way up.
I hope you’re recovered from the virus and the horribleness that inaugurated the week. I’m sorry you’re worried about finances and so on. I wish I could say something to make all this better… Sending solidarity and love.
(I’m grateful that our kids disliked Disney–it seems to have saved us a ton of money at least…)
Thank you – and same to you. I think we just have to get through all of this one day at a time.
I realize that there’s a whole supply & demand thing, but I think it actually borders on criminal to make Disney visits so expensive.
I’ve often wished there were little pins floating above everyone’s head that revealed things like income, debt, etc because I am SO nosy.
I went to a Korean restaurant last weekend and ordered Japchae. It was something I read about on a blog (so yours, or Nicole & Maggie, or … not sure anyone else of the few blogs left talk about Korean food). Anyway I’d never heard of it but it looked like it would be yummy and IT WAS. Usually my fallback at Korean restaurants is bulgogi or kalbi – both terrific, but I wanted to get outside that box a bit. This place I went sells a spicy crab that requires you wear gloves to eat it!!!
oh – and I parked by the restaurant’s dumpster/recycling area and you should have seen the MASSIVE empty gochujang containers.
Wasn’t us! Our favorite Korean place in town has an unimpressive version (and they’re often out of the noodles anyway) so we don’t generally order it.
How does one run out of noodles?? I’m always surprised when restaurants run out of basic supplies.
It feels ASTONISHINGLY expensive. I guess they know they have a captive audience. I just hope that the kids won’t love it so much they want to keep going? That has not been my experience with other places though…
Maybe it was us, we love japchae! We have had subpar versions from Bon Chon but we’ve had a lot of other really good japchae.
That crab sounds DANGEROUS XD