Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (257)
May 5, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 7: I started making lists of consumables to stock up on a little bit. Who knows how long we’re going to be impacted by tariff related shipping failures.
I’ve wanted a deep freezer for years, but we’ve only now got room for one – if I’m willing to commit to it. Really a bad time to be waffly. My hesitation is the commitment is threefold: deep freezer, backup generator, and then the more trivial by comparison cost of filling it up. It doesn’t happen very often but if we have another 2-3 day outage, our one generator can’t keep everything going long enough to save the contents of the fridge and freezer and what’s the point of filling up a freezer and losing it all to an outage? But I hesitate. Even if I hadn’t just donated four figures worth of cash to so many people in need two months in a row, and had to cobble together a professional mini wardrobe, the costs of both a freezer and a generator would still be a solid hit. As it is, it’s a lot. We’re also circling back to the roof work. We got so busy earlier in the year, we never got that work started. That gave me time to save, thankfully, but this feels like the year of all the money going out the door while our investments are completely bonkers.
Year 6, Day 8: My psyche is still healing from the bruising on Friday. I can tell because my dreams have been especially weird and revolve a lot around people and betrayal. Getting booked for 6 meetings over the next two weeks also messes with my psyche. I hate meetings. I especially hate more than one meeting a week, that eats deeply into my solo working time and management time. All of them have a legit need, still doesn’t make them any more palatable.
Very annoyed I was too tired and busy this weekend to complete the Christmas presents book order for Independent bookstore weekend. Or day. Whichever it was, bookshop had their annual free shipping event and that might be the last one we get for a while. I may have to go browse our local bookstore which I love but I just can’t find the energy to try to make that happen.
Year 6, Day 9: The jeans arrived! While the nice soft sweaters I tried with them make me look odd and lumpy, I’ve finally sized up appropriately and have jeans that fit. I know I said this before, was it a few months ago?, but that fitting was so wrong. I’m up to an 8P, the 00P and 2P days are well in the back mirror. I’d clearly forgotten what it felt like to have jeans that fit right. Also I snagged a pair of cargo pants that also fit for $13. I’m assuming that this is the last of the new clothes I’ll buy for several years, barring business pants if I can find just one pair that fit. That should be enough for the level of business professional I’m willing to present. If nothing else, COVID, bearing 2 kids, and hitting 40 should have sufficiently aged my face so that I no longer look like a child and don’t need makeup and full professional attire to be taken seriously. Plus my “I’m too old for this shit” facial expression ought to carry me nicely.
Forced myself to do all the sets of pushups scheduled for one day today, then forced myself to work late. My brain and arms are floppy noodles.
Year 6, Day 10: We’re seeing a lot of this absolutely ridiculous “just farm / hunt your own food” stuff on Bluesky in response to the slashing of the FDA and food standards. A whole lot of people forget that today’s foods and other consumables are only what they say they are on the packaging because of regulations and inspections and all that, don’t they? And a whole lot more swallow TikTok or whatever trad wife nonsense is spouting the “homesteading is easy” line without a lick of sense. I tell you, if we had to farm, just us right now the way our home is, for survival, we’d starve. Even if I put real effort into it, if we had to do that on top of our normal lives, we’d never make it. Even if we had actual farmland, weather and weeds that don’t sprout, and pests and predators and insects could easily devastate whatever crops you grow before you managed to harvest anything! How about we don’t let go of the wonders of modern life with foods that are available year round even during the starving time, and foods that are what they say they are, and medications that are what they’re intended to be, and clean water and air? Good grief. All these ignorant hateful people romanticize a fake perfect past that never existed and we all have to suffer for it.
Year 6, Day 11: The flippin ants are back!! Argh!! I’ll have to add boric acid to the mix. It’s somewhere around here.
I was on edge most of the day and couldn’t figure out why until I realized that it was a week ago today that my staff’s parting gift was a knife in the back. Right. Even though that’s likely in the rearview, it’s still haunting me with the ghosts of “having to trust new bosses to know my integrity and back me up” which historically is a thing I don’t, and they didn’t, do. I spent the day, and the weekend, primed to defend myself against the boss and HR. Turns out my boss didn’t want to see the proof that I documented of all the ways I provided Benedict Arnold support, they just wanted to know if I was ok and to apologize that I went through that alone with HR, without them. That was deeply unsettling. I’m not ready to extend trust to them yet but apparently my reputation, and my dealings with them directly, were enough for them to know that I’d never do what Benedict claimed in their call to HR, and that I would have gone above and beyond for them like I do any of my team. It’s true, I just didn’t expect to be treated like it was true, or humanely, after HR.
Yeah my first year gardening I devoted half my box to fingerling potatoes, my entire yield was two handfuls. I mentioned it to my front yard gardener and he said yeah you need an acre for potatoes. I do not own an acre. š
I am glad that your reputation carried you through, it was disconcerting to realize when a lazy exec got promoted that it doesn’t matter what you actually do at work, it only matters what the decision makers think you are doing.
We have pretty high yields for a little container garden. We get as much as one small bowl full of potatoes if I have the time and energy to dig them up at the right time. XD We never get more than enough for one solid meal in any round of harvest, though. This would never sustain life. I am always grateful for the ready supply of food we can buy at the grocery store.
Yeah I don’t know how it works at exec levels if they don’t see the actual proof of the work people do but I don’t want to run at those levels either. Igh.
I did an extra run out to Costco just tonight, (even though I usually just go once every month or two and I almost never shop this late in the day). But I’m nervous about how things are going to go as the tariffs start to ripple through, and I decided that if preemptively buying all the non-food stuff I expect us to need over the next 3 months makes me feel less vulnerable, it’s probably worth the shopping time and storage hassle. We installed a bidet after the worst of the COVID toilet paper shortages though, so at least I don’t have to worry about THAT! š
Re: chest freezer – a full freezer will last an average of 48 hours in a power outage as long as it stays shut. So if you alternate mostly running the fridge and occasionally the freezer, you’ll have a decent chance at keeping both appliances chilled enough.
Even if the food does start to thaw, you don’t have to throw it out right away. The chest freezer is now a large cooler filled with refrigerator foods! So as long as it stays below 40Ā° you can still cook and eat it – or if the power comes back on quickly enough, cook it and promptly refreeze it. The last time we had a decent power out I was able to rescue most of our frozen raw meat that way; it was the condiments that were painful, because I hadn’t transferred the fridge into coolers in time. *sigh* Live & learn!
PS Sometimes your utility company or homeowners insurance will cover the cost of replacing food after power outs lasting a certain # of hours. My mom was able to do that once, but you’d have to check your contracts.
My work account won’t let me comment on your posts anymore!
re: freezer: We won’t get one and still have a small refrigerator because that’s the only way I can keep food from being stored forever. I think for me there’s some out of sight out of mind and I need to see it regularly to remember we have it so it gets eaten within like a year.
Meetings suck!
I feel like a lot of people need to understand comparative advantage. We didn’t HAVE any surplus for most of human history. Trade and economies of scale make so much possible.
I’m glad you have a great boss! And I’m not at all surprised that they trust you. I AM sorry that HR sucked. š