Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (260)
May 26, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 28: Last week sucked, and then the weekend was completely draining too but for different reasons. I accidentally set off a PEM crash with my workout Friday night so I woke up in pain and feeling really sick on Saturday. We had plans on Saturday! hate so muchWe weArgh. re taking a couple friends out to an outdoor event for their birthday and there was a chance of petting livestock. I really didn’t want to miss it but it wouldn’t have been responsible of me to go if I was as sick virally as I felt. Thankfully, by noon I could tell that this was all pain-generated ick. Safe to go! Of course while that adventure was fun, it was also a bit of a lot. I was as wrung out by the end of Saturday as at the start. To make matters worse, SmolAc was sick and was complaining of leg pain that was so bad that half their body would tense up like a stiff board when the pain hit. Every 3-5 minutes. I massaged their legs every few minutes until 4 am so they could sleep. Naturally they woke up fresh as a daisy and I was wrecked.
Year 6, Day 29: We were meant to see a heat wave this week in Northern California. Our little pocket rarely gets the full predicted temps so at best I’m hoping to get a 10 degree bump for a couple days. When we get as many as 2 warm days, it’s enough to get some seeds to germinate or seedlings to grow a tiny bit more. So far the few warm days we’ve had have coaxed the green beans and a couple cucumber seedlings out at a time. I planted another round of green bean seeds with the potatoes and hope more sugar snap peas might make an appearance later in the summer. They did last year and what a fun yield we had for 3-4 weeks before powdery mildew shut us down.
In organizational news, I’ve been working on filling in spreadsheets with all clothing purchases for myself and the kids, electronics, and some common consumables so I can track how much I paid (and how long the clothes last and their care instructions when the tags are faded). Not everything will be in there, I’m not trying to make this a huge time sink, but whatever I can easily reference online will go in there. It’s just good to have a quick reference.
Year 6, Day 30: The last of our COVID boosters are scheduled this week for all of us ahead of summer crowds, travel, and infectious waves. It continues to feel very weird to be getting boosters for travel, logging air miles from credit card bonuses, and processing refunds for returns while ALSO staring down an existential crisis with our democratic republic under attack and our human rights being eroded every day.
We’ve left public comment on this issue of the FDA deciding unilaterally to reduce access to COVID vaccines, it’s so infuriating. If people don’t want them that’s on them, it’s despicable to limit it for the rest of us who do want that level of protection.
I got my own booster this week and am mildly annoyed that the vaccination clinic is always so balky about it when we have doctor’s orders in the system. Quite sure that our PCP is the one most qualified to say what we should get between the GP and the injection clinic.
I’m worried we won’t get an updated vaccine approved and recommended in the fall for the newest variants. I’m worried about symptoms I already have becoming much worse if I catch it. The brain fog isn’t the same thick fog these days as much as it used to be, it’s more frequently like cookie cutter chomps out of my brain where words I know simply don’t exist anymore.
Year 6, Day 31: I couldn’t get away from work early enough to make it to a family event at SmolAc’s daycare this afternoon but did stop in time to cook dinner from scratch.
I threw together rigatoni carbonara with pan fried broccoli using Penzey’s roasted garlic and Penzey’s Justice seasoning instead of pepper and pepper flakes, and using my precious hoarded Zingerman’s Nueske Applewood smoked bacon. We had cracked black pepper and more grated Parmesan for topping the pasta at the table. It’s a simple meal but awfully good with the right ingredients. I took extra time cooking the bacon to render a lot of the fat and drained it to give the remaining bacon extra crispy edges. This is a very thick cut Bacon so it doesn’t crisp the same way as thin bacon does but it holds up really well for this recipe. I didn’t pay $22/lb. I stocked up when it was last on sale at $12/lb. That’s still pricy enough that I ration it and in between times it stays hidden in the foil bag it shipped in 😆
Year 6, Day 32: Argh. Everyone’s job (at least around my level) got a lot bigger this year and none of us are coping with it super smoothly. We’re managing, but everyone has a week, or an issue, or a department that we hate so much for making our lives so much harder and some days, it’s harder to be at peace with it than others.
Semi-professional wardrobe woes: I hate the current trend of puff sleeves, had to search hours for less offensively puffy sleeves. I had missed the two-week return window on several pairs of pants from Aritzia. ARGH. Two weeks! It was my fault, I had recorded the return rules but I felt terrible one weekend and then was too tired the next weekend to remember. Thankfully the CSR helped me with an exchange so that I could get a full refund and try a different line. The new line arrived today and nope. High rise pants make me look and feel like an overstuffed sausage. So those go back too which should conclude this round of professional wardrobing roulette. That leaves me with two pairs of jeans plus a belt, two pairs of trousers I’ll have to hem carefully for length, and four blouses. That should do for the next year and change. Please be it.
Not professional: I wear my Svaha skirts every summer but only the two twirl skirts (2020 and 2022) fit now. The midi skirt and 3 fit-and-flare dresses (from 2020 and 2018) are too small for me which stinks, I really liked them. I can’t decide if I should sell, donate or keep them for JB. For now, I wanted two more skirts in the rotation. While I don’t love the waistbands that I could see, I really loved the designs, and they tout giant pockets (a must) so I’ve splurged on a few skirts from Maya Kern‘s latest release to try. I hope they’re great quality and look as nice in person as they seem to be online.
