Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (254)
April 14, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 351: This day started with the surprise visit of a neighbor dog as happy to see me as I was him. That was really nice. Lots of kisses and skritches. Every morning should start with a dog visit until we can bring home a dog friend.
I spent 2.25 hours trying to order pet food from not-terrible places to ship to the reservations. That is way too much time for what result I got out of it: having to order one part of the shipment from PetsSmart and 2/3 of it from Amazon. I also tried to get electricity hooked up for a family but we’re going 3 rounds of email and calls trying to locate their account and we’re not there yet.
Courtney Milan did a great explainer on the tariffs. I’ve been sharing this with people who aren’t plugged into the better sources of news (not mainstream media which fails on many fronts). I’ve also been recommending that they follow Celeste Pewter on Bluesky to get good political commentary and actions to encourage them to educate themselves a bit more and to hopefully take some action.
Year 5, Day 352: What a day. I woke up with blood pressure-brain problems so I was woozy all day long. Had a 2 hour call. Had to follow up on the Lakota orders, it wasn’t certain which would ship and which wouldn’t. Had to check in with staff to assign them more work and answer questions. SO many questions. OMG.
I catch myself staring at my to do list like there’s some magical line item that I can add that will fight fascism and make this country the place it should have been but has never been, and adding precisely nothing. There are a thousand things we can do, it’s just today, in this moment, my brain is stuck. It’ll shake loose, it’s just *waves hands*.
We’re also very close to ticking over into Year 6 since COVID and I wonder if it’s time to change the titles of these posts. COVID is obviously here to stay. We’re not likely to hear much about it with this completely reckless, thieving, homicidal administration. I don’t know what to switch to, though.
Almost back on track with my workouts after the big derailing in January. My stamina still feels hollowed out, though, not sure if that feeling will go away anytime soon. Occasionally I do feel stronger, though, and I’m grateful for those few feedback moments.
Year 5, Day 353: Lucky timing, border collie friend caught me early so we had a quick game of catch. I can never pet her anymore because my only job is to PLAY and dispense TREATS. Oh well.
I’ve been in a holding pattern for so many things, for months, that it feels weird now that most of them are resolved. Is this how it feels when stress levels are reset from Excessively High to Medium? This is good! I’m just a little wobbly.
- We’ve filed our tax return, paid the state and received the federal refund (surprised and relieved).
- The raise negotiations that were held up for months concluded abruptly (got an increase. not what I deserve but in this economy I’ll take it for now). Now the waiting for the paperwork begins.
- We’ve met the minimum spend on the first churning credit card, bonus points deposited. The second churning credit card has arrived in time for us to pay for the big insurance premiums. (Our home and earthquake polices went up again, of course. Mrgh.)
- The restructure at work is almost done, we know all the essential changes and people can live with them.
- We took a day off and had an overnight trip with the kids that was pretty good. I’d been dreading the trip, worrying that SmolAc would be in Bad Traveler Grumpy mode. They were excited, though, so that helped.
I took advantage of the sun and the school minimum day to pull weeds for a quick half hour and worked up a sweat. Pretending that I can work my way up to my trainer’s level of buff. Hah!
Year 5, Day 354: My phone camera has started doing this strange thing. It strobes black vertical bars across the screen that causes the pictures to be partly blacked out. It seems to only do this indoors, but it’s cropping up at places where I’ve taken hundreds of photos and videos. I can work around it by taking a video and snapping pictures as I record but that doesn’t work for portraits. I don’t intend to buy a new phone so soon, this one’s only 3 years old! I’ll have to figure out a fix somehow.
In other phone news, PiC’s phone croaked so we ordered him a new one. Just like that, we hit the minimum spend on the card that just arrived today.
Year 5, Day 355: The slow motion ant infestation is making me lose it a little. I find them in the kitchen, put down bait. Two days later, I find them in the office, put down bait. Two days later, kitchen again. Bait, again. Two days later, bedroom. Bait. Four days later, bathroom. ARGHHHH!! It’s like they have us surrounded and every time I bait one area, they send their scouts in another room.
I have to tell you that the Advion ant gel does them in the best. We put a little squirt on painters tape and 2 days later no ants. And I live in the South, there are so many ants.