By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (273)

August 25, 2025

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 119: The parking enforcement company that a local town has contracted always take all the best parking spots on the business lots. Irony?

Do you ever get twitchy needing a specific kind of sensory input? I had to stop wearing my rings for several months or more. My fingers keep randomly swelling up and then at some point, I noticed the gems were loose from my heirloom rings, thankfully before I actually lost them. (Heirloom? The word looks wrong now.) I splurged on a couple of rings from Peculiarity Shop because I really liked the look of them but also! Genius crafters that they are, the rings are adjustable! So I can wear them on good and bad hand days and that’s great because I didn’t realize til I put them on that my hands had been *needing* the feel of rings. Weird!

Happy paw-and-claw: TWO dog encounters today! My dog friends, I haven’t seen them most of the summer and I missed them so! <3

Year 6, Day 120: I don’t know why I was semi-resistant to trying out this online math tutor for JB last year but I’m not now. We are doing some trial (online) lessons with a tutor who PiC’s coworker recommended. They had worked with the coworker’s kid who is two years ahead of JB. Please cross your fingers that they make sense to JB! JB has some math anxiety from last year, long division and fractions were hard for many kids and the teachers struggled with a wide swath of them just not getting it. We can trial other tutors on this platform if this one doesn’t work out but I think(?) we’ll need to give them at least 4-6 sessions to see if they are able to present the material in a way that JB can absorb. Maybe it shouldn’t take that long to pick a good fit? I don’t know, tutors didn’t help me much but that might be because we had extremely limited options. If you have any math tutor recommendations, I’d be glad to hear them!

Happy paw-and-claw: Two more dog encounters today! May all my dog friends keep coming by.

Year 6, Day 121: Getting back into the school schedule swing of things is a slow process. Getting irritated at everyone in my family before 8 am? Like lightning. It’s nice when they all leave the house and leave me alone in peace.

We tried a new very local Mediterranean place in hopes that it would be as good as the one that’s 20 miles out of town. They had a couple things that were new to me and so good: beyti (seasoned beef & lamb wrapped in flatbread topped w/sauce) and muhammara (fire roasted red pepper with nuts, bread crumbs, spices & pomegranate molasses). But everything else was just ok. I couldn’t put my finger on anything wrong, we both agreed it was just the original did everything better somehow. PiC’s theory is that it’s the seasoning.

Speaking of disappointing foods, the Auntie Anne’s cinnamon rolls in a can are totally disappointing. The ease can’t be beat: once I get over my fear of the can exploding in my face, you just plop the rolls into the cookie sheet and bake. But the dough is always dry and the icing is only so-so. I suppose that’s what we get for the price and convenience.

Happy paw-and-claw: The crow buddies are back in town (our neighborhood)! Unfortunately for them, they were accompanied by the ravens. The crows and I have an understanding. I click to them when I’m putting out treats for them and when I’m a safe distance away, they come fill their beaks. The ravens are so fearless (and with those beaks, why wouldn’t they be?) they hop over for treats the moment I put them down. They don’t wait for me to get more than 5 steps away. They’re still cautious, if I turned around they’d back up, but otherwise they’re coming in for pick-up. They swiped everything before the crows were willing to come down from on high, so I retreated into the house to let them get comfortable and then came out with a handful of peanuts. One crow managed to sneak in there and snag a couple. It was fun sharing this with SmolAc who’d never seen me working on my long distance corvid friendships. JB has, and is mildly amused by it.

Year 6, Day 122: Grmph. I’ve had a dry cough occasionally for the past week and change and pronounced fatigue all week. SmolAc has had a runny nose for the past three days. No other symptoms. It feels like cold and flu season is gently threatening us but it might just be back to school season kicking our asses, generally. Today, I couldn’t shake a headache all day and now I’m really worried that some virus has gotten hold of my system.

… turns out it did. I don’t know what got me but a friend on here admonished me to go rest and they were right. I had to go to bed for a few hours voluntarily or risk crashing and burning. Since that came with a risk of actual crashing when I drove to JB’s after school activities, I acceded to their greater wisdom. Good thing they know me better than I know me.

Year 6, Day 123: Happy paw-and-claw: Two crows came by the house. One of them is slightly bedraggled and very fearful and nervous. That doesn’t quite match my usual pair of crows from last year that were a touch bolder than all the others. They visited a little more often and even did fly-bys to get my attention, but maybe there’s a connection between the bedragglement and the fear. I hope it’s ok. I put out a few peanuts to see if they’d investigate and the bigger bolder crow happily chomped them up. Smaller crow was sad. I was sad for smaller crow. I put down a big handful of peanuts and retreated to the house so they could feast in peace.