Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (301)
March 9, 2026
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 315: Day one of solo parenting. PiC is away at a work thing this week. I’ve been bracing myself for this for weeks, telling myself that I would moderate my expectations for work and household stuff. The goal: keep the kids fed, clothed, alive, get them to and from school. Don’t break myself trying to do the impossible.
How we coped: burgers at the local place with outdoor seating. Stern directions to head DIRECTLY for the shower after we got home. Everyone in bed for math tutoring and reading time. SmolAc was happily sandwiched between us “reading” while we painfully inched our way through one equation after another.
From The Diplomat – Callum: You’re a military-industrial complex papered over by a Constitution.
Boy does that description of America hits home especially hard since this administration has been murdering right left and center and has torpedoed all the soft diplomacy we used to do through USAID.
Year 6, Day 316: Day two of solo parenting. I had a very tight timetable for dropping off JB and SmolAc this morning to get back in time for a meeting. I made all the runs in exactly 60 minutes and managed to get to my meeting in time. Score! JB had an afterschool activity at school so that bought me an extra hour to “rest” (working from bed). That helped.
Picking up JB late meant that I went straight from school to the orthodontist, then to pick up SmolAc a little earlier than Monday in hopes that we’ll be able to get dinner on the table earlier, get homework done, and get to bed earlier. That’s not how things worked out of course.
We got home much earlier yes, we ate dinner earlier also yes, but JB ran into trouble with their math homework and I had to teach them how to do it step by step, work through several problems, and then figure out how to create a story around how to solve that type of problem that would stick in their brain.
We did not hit the 8 pm bedtime. We did not remember to take out the garbage bins. We definitely did not have 5-7 minutes for my workout. But we survived intact.
Year 6, Day 317: Day three of solo parenting. And there’s my limit! Did the drop-offs this morning again. Kept running into people we know who haven’t seen me in months (PiC has been doing this run to save me time) so they wanted to catch up. It’s touching that they seemed so delighted to see me but that took a whackload of energy. I drove him and felt the exhaustion buzz set into my limbs.
The best encounter was a surprise appearance of our neighbor dogs who nearly shivered out of their skins with excitement when we spotted each other. I adore them and the feeling is mutual and I never walk away from them wondering if they actually like me or if they’re just being polite/friendly like I do with humans.
The one really good thing this week: the crushing suffocating relentless fatigue of the past several weeks has finally lifted. I’d forgotten what it felt like to only have pain without dragging the 1000 lb weight of fatigue with me and it’s so tolerable. My fingers are randomly swollen. My lower back aches. My upper back and shoulders are tight as a drum. And it’s still so much better than being crushed by fatigue. I am grateful. (Update: It lasted one day. I’m still grateful for the experience of that one day.)
Year 6, Day 318: A friend shared that her Asian ex-GF has gone to become a police officer in the Bay Area and my brain stuttered to a stop. WHAT. Really? In the years 2025-2026? That PD is notoriously racist even for police.
It also made me reflect on this scene from The Diplomat that felt similar though I wonder if one could legitimately make the argument the CIA is both a rotten agency AND still does SOME good. I don’t know enough about them to comment on that. I definitely don’t feel like we can make that argument for American police. I don’t know of any police that do any amount of good sufficient to counterbalance even a fraction of the evil they do.
Stuart: How are you not furious?
Eidra: Stuart, I am a young tiny Asian American woman at the top of one of the most baldly paternalistic arms of the UG government. I am furious all the time.
If I could go after terrorists and human traffickers with an organization that didn’t have an 80 year legacy of racism and human rights violations, I would.
Stuart: We should be getting this for the recruitment video.
Eidra: There is not another better CIA or America. The ones we have are fucked up. We make compromises.
Some days we feel ok about that. Some days we have gin.
Year 6, Day 319: Confusion. The garden faucet has had a slow drip for months. I’d made the mistake of using it and then it wouldn’t shut off completely. I can’t replace it because the jerks here before us installed some kind of bizarre lock on the faucet that our handy friend says has to be cut off if we don’t have a key for it. There is no key for it. I stuck a jug under the drip and have been using that to water the garden until I solve the problem. I went to do the usual garden watering dump today and the jug is empty. The drip has stopped?? Woo!
I haven’t had time to figure out how to fix our oven yet. Maybe it will also mysteriously fix itself? Please?
(So far, no.)
What I’m listening to this week: