By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (295)

January 26, 2026

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 273: How do we seriously still have a president who has giant baby tantrums over not being given the Nobel Peace Prize when what he really deserves is to spend the rest of his life in a deep dark hole, and the rest of the world has to worry about World War 3 as a result?? *Endless screaming*

Also frustrating on the micro-level of life: my throat was full of lumps this weekend. That’s a sure sign that my body’s trying its damnedest to fight off an infection and not quite managing it without doing damage to me. I’ve upped my antivirals to the “acute infection” dosage. Crossing all the things that they do the trick because our next three weekends are booked solid, I’m trying to figure out Spring Break, summer break and summer camps. It’s a bit more than my brain has capacity to manage right now. But it’s all got to be done before we have no choices.

Year 6, Day 274: I agreed to go on a little quick weekend snow adventure and I’m having pangs of regrets about the whole endeavor. House sharing. Bathroom sharing. Being in the cold much of the day. Not being in my own little Hobbit hole? Not being able to spend the weekend cleaning up the papers piling up like snowdrifts and trying on the belts I ordered for my skirts to see if they work? It’s about all I can do to make myself take deep breaths and be Zen about it.

PiC’s in charge of organizing all the cold weather gear because I have no time and this is more his deal. Plus I have never properly done any of this – as a Southern Californian born and raised, and without money to travel or do fun things, snow was a thing that happened to other people. He’s getting everyone outfitted from head to toe and that’s going to cost a pretty penny in the end. I’m not looking forward to totalling up the costs but I set ourselves a budget and he’s doing his best to stay at budget.

Year 6, Day 275: A nasty byproduct of being deemed competent in a leadership position is being voluntold to do things like presentations and business travel. I hate presentations and blergh business travel. I very tidily dodged all but one trip last year, through honest but perhaps less than chivalrous means. (Must I be chivalrous when dealing with an equal counterpart?k May I manage the same this year, or better. Zero trips, I vote for zero business trips. I want to see nothing and nobody. Just let me do my job.

In exciting news, I’ve been promoted to the 8 lb weights for my bicep curls. Did I mention that? I can’t recall. But we start with very low rep ranges (6-10) when we start a new weight level and I was enthusiastically trying to hit the high end of the range tonight when I reread my assignment and realized it said FOUR sets. Not just two. Oh. Oh that’s very different from what I was mentally prepared for. Also physically braced for. Well then. Change of plans: taking a good long break between each pair of sets to avoid stressing my wrists. My hands look ridiculous holding these 8 lb weights because they are, by comparison, enormous. It worries me a little bit that my wrists won’t bear up under the strain. If you weren’t around 20 years ago, my wrists are the original focal point for my fibromyalgia so I try to be at least a little mindful of overstressing them without being hypervigilant or babying them. It’s a weird balance.

Year 6, Day 276: ✅ I have done the donations part of my activism today. ✅ I have cut out fabric using my little graph paper pattern for two more wee bags. ✅ I’ve ordered a couple organization options for my tech bin to get the cords and cables under control. Maybe also for other uses but they will occur to me later. ✅ I’ve ordered several batches of very competitively priced supplies (manicure kits, cleaning cloths, socks, underwear) for our next Lakota community shipment. I know some friends will be bringing me their weeded out clothes next weekend so this will go into that box since weight isn’t a factor. I could have shipped this all direct but, at these prices, I wanted to vet the goods before sending them on.

Freezer and leftover dinner! November me divided a big batch of Japanese curry in two and froze it. I pulled that out midday with no plan at all. When everyone got home from their long day, we threw it on top of fettuccine and called it good. (They actually did like it, so it was indeed good.)

Year 6, Day 277: I go to bed hurting and exhausted every night, and I wake up hurting and exhausted every morning. The manner of pain varies, usually, but the cadence does not. Yet I am acutely aware that it could be so much worse. I’m in regular contact with a minimum of five migraine sufferers most days, and boy, it makes me so grateful that my brand of pain is what it is even while I’m so sad for them. I have gritted it out through so many kinds of pain, in so many muscles and bones, as long as it’s below the skull/neck. Eye pain, head pain, jaw pain and dental pain though? Absolutely not. I cannot function with those. I support them the best I can depending on our relationship but wow does it sound awful.

Well here’s some fun (not). I discovered 4 more orders at the art shop two days after the orders had been submitted – oops? I didn’t check the business email so totally missed those notifications. But as I started clicking into the details something was weird. The shipping address on all four were the same as one another. Waitaminnit. That’s the same address as the order from two weeks ago.

I logged into Big Cartel to ask them what to do about these weird transactions that seem scammy and logged into Stripe to check the transaction history to find almost 500 declined transactions since Jan 11 – that first order from two weeks ago. That’s over $3000 in attempted charges, 4 of which slipped through. At first I was trying to figure out how they were trying to scam us, now I think this is someone just using the shop as their way to flip through stolen credit cards and as a result we’re going to lose money because when we refund everything, Stripe is going to keep their fees for all the charges so we’re going to end up OWING them. It’s not a ton but the principle of it is infuriating! ARGH.