By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (274)

September 1, 2025

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 126: I’m tetchy today. We went to a family gathering on Saturday. It was good fun for all of us! We very much needed that catch up. But it wiped me out completely. I spent most of Sunday laid up. No batch cooking for me. 🙁 Today was less bad but only less in the sense that I can sit upright but otherwise am kinda useless. Walking is a tall order, doing anything that requires standing is right out. I probably need another 2-3 days to recover, probably, and I resent that so much.

I took it very easy on Saturday, sitting down most of the time, mostly indoors shaded from the sun and wind. All I did was parent when the kids needed me, and talk to some friends. PiC did the bulk of the SmolAc herding. Yet, by the evening, it felt like I’d been plugged into the wall and every muscle was separately being electrocuted. I also resent how much this reminds me that I can’t do stamina-requiring things like go to protests. My friends did this weekend, and I’m grateful for their activism on these days when both the personal and world outlooks are so bleak.

Alas, no paws or claws today, either. That would have cheered me up immensely.

Year 6, Day 127: I always spend a little time reading current job listings, keeping feelers out the market for opportunities, in an attempt to stay informed enough that I don’t feel completely flat-footed when my time runs out at this job. It’s been a depressing exercise, the past 18 months of listings at best generate an “ugh. meh. bleck.” There was only one that looked remotely interesting last year, an Assistant Director in an advocacy organization helping incarcerated people reintegrate into society. I spotted one today that I am definitely not qualified for, running a conservation organization, but the employer piqued my interest. I don’t yearn to start yet another job in the workplace but this must be my gut telling me that if I must change jobs, only jobs that are about doing good in the world are going to fit the bill. That’s new.

It’s a bit of a luxury criteria considering the number of people out of work now, and at the payscale I’d want/need, so I should adjust my attitude and hold on to this job which at least does some measure of good with a reasonable moral compass and isn’t outright evil.

Year 6, Day 128: Every time I try to deal with Comcast for an outage credit, they try to upsell me on their mobile service. Why on earth would I want a year of terrible free mobile service from them when they can’t even give us reliable high-speed internet? I had 3 outages in a single week alone! Honestly.

I’m still very much on the cusp of this flare up so I’m still having to be careful to coddle my body what seems like a ridiculous amount. But after less than ten minutes standing, my whole body starts initiating a shutdown sequence so my opinions don’t matter here. 😒

By spacing out the prep for this really simple recipe for Vietnamese Pork-Stuffed Fried Tofu In Tomato Sauce, skipping stuffing the tofu entirely, and sitting down for 95% of the prep, I did manage to cook a whole new dish. It’s pretty good! It’s now meatballs and tofu in sauce but still good. That’s kind of nice.

Year 6, Day 129: Normally, I only read ebooks on my Kindle and Kobo apps on my phone so I’ve never replaced my old timey Kindle since it was too annoying to read on a device that didn’t have a light of its own. This isn’t usually an issue, except when I buy a Humble Bundle and then have to download every file, text them to my phone, download them there and THEN upload to the Kobo app. What a PAIN. It’s not something I do often, maybe once a year, but woof is it a timesink.

The app interface is also frustrating. We can’t do bulk actions that I’ve been able to find (adding multiple books to collections), and I hate that series of books are organized alphabetically instead of by volume and that I have no way to change that within my collections. So when I have a 20 book series, I have to open the info for every single one to hunt down the next book in the series.

I wonder if it’s even worth submitting feedback. I’m going to try.

Year 6, Day 130: I’m on Day 6 or 7 of this damn flare and am reflecting on how this is awful and yet it’s lucky that the way they present, I can force myself to do some of the things I need to do. It’s miserable and I pay a very steep price for forcing it, but I can force the issue. So crucial things like work and school pick up can usually happen even if my insides will then threaten to be my outsides if I don’t collapse in short order. But cooking is going too far, and sometimes showering is, too, even a quick ten minutes version. “Lucky”.

On the COVID front we personally know four people, one in July and three in August, who have caught it and it’s hard not to feel like it’s hemming us in on all sides psychologically with the usual late summer surge, and the latest bullshit restrictions on vaccines taking away one major layer of protection (we still mask regularly). Our main supplier of masks these days, Vogmask, is seeing lower demand which is affecting their inventory so that’s a bit worrying. I spent a big chunk of cash recently replenishing our supply now that SmolAc and I are wearing them, too.

(Yes, there are likely better masks but fitwise these are consistent good fits for our size and shape faces, and the kids can easily carry and put them on and take them off. And they get the super colorful ones. Those factors all add up to wearing them happily and for long periods of time as needed instead of avoiding them or taking them off repeatedly.)

I used to wear my flomask most regularly so I have tons of those filters. I stopped because the bottom elastic was overstretched. They recently started stocking those, so I can fix that, and wearing that more. Our healthcare provider is still supplying us with home tests, so I’m collecting those and tucking some into holiday gifts for folks who don’t have ready access.