Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (333)
October 19, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 7, Day 167: I actually fell asleep last night without a sleep aid! That’s … it’s been months since I could get to sleep naturally! But oh my gosh I’m creaky and achy today. We had time in the pool this weekend and it coincided with my throat FINALLY healing up – both good things! However, I also gave my liver a break today and didn’t take pain meds until evening so got to enjoy the new pain in all its glory.
We received confirmation that we have been assigned a table at a craft fair this fall so now JB and I are cranking out the papercrafts like it’s our job. It sort of is! I’m not sure how much of each product to bring for a crowd this big (hundreds) in this economy (terrible) for a whole 6 hours. Thinking positively, we’ve branched out from their art on greeting cards to adding prints, stickers, and buttons of their designs too. They’re all very cute!
Thinking less positively, I’m debating whether it’s worth updating the online shop. It doesn’t get any traffic anymore since Twitter was destroyed and I haven’t had time to do much with it on Bluesky. But that can be a question for later. I’ve been taking progress photos and maybe those can serve for the online postings.
I’ve got to get cracking in my sewing, too, though I can’t imagine that I’ll be able to make a great deal more of them by the time we show. It takes about 3 hours per item and that’s a lot of time and related energy.
Year 7, Day 168: I’m about to go to war with our shower water pressure. It’s been dwindling a little more each day, and just stopped like it was choked off today! What the heck?? I’m not as sanguine about tackling a possible repair here on my own as I was (also not) about fixing the oven. Plumbing is scarier than some oven surgery. I don’t want to have to open up the walls but we are worried this is because of a leak somewhere. For the moment, this is getting backburnered though, we have another shower to use and we simply don’t have the energy to tackle this.
I asked my trainer to crank my workouts way down last month because I’m being pulled in so many directions it’s not even funny. It’s become more and more draining to do even the barest minimum workout, though, which is both frustrating on principle and in the whole chronic illness this problem is not solveable kind of way.
Year 7, Day 169: I’ve been fighting a sad and losing war with the powdery mildew that’s come back to attack my snap peas. I’ve been spraying the plant with a vinegar and dish soap solution to try to treat the affected leaves to no avail. It’s a bit depressing and has led to me neglecting the garden a bit. Usually every day I get a bit of joy from a tiny bit of growth, a new little tendril poking up, a little bundle of flower starting to develop, but the plant essentially looked dead all last week. It was just a matter of time before I had to rip it out, like last year’s, I thought. I had germinated a back up in the house which is growing pretty hardily but hadn’t quite gotten to the point where it seemed safe to
But this morning I spy some little bits of white peeking out from under new leaves! Not just one or two, either, there are at least half a dozen, maybe more. Maybe all hope is not lost.
Year 7, Day 170: Getting near the end here. I’ve put together personal thank you notes for vendors who have worked with us over the years. I wanted to thank them myself. They’ll never get that acknowledgement from the faceless corporation that doesn’t give two hoots about anyone, before I close this chapter.
This week’s loaf of foccacia was a little flat. Turns out I forgot my lukewarm water temp range and mixed in 120 degree water instead of 100-115. Whoops. Still edible! It just didn’t grow much. Oh and I oversalted the top. That was much less great but it’s easy to brush off the extra salt. Ooh! Maybe the next go should be 1.5x to get a taller loaf next time for sandwiches. I’ll skip the kosher salt on top, and stick with a bit of sea salt, since the kosher salt seems to do something funny to the top.
Year 7, Day 171: It’s a bit frustrating that I’ve been taking Tragic Sandwich‘s advice from a few months back to rest as much as I can and YET it’s still not enough. I send myself back to bed for 1-2 hours of rest every weekday and it’s still like peeling myself, a caramel bog, back out when the timer goes off to go pick up a child. No, it’s a lot frustrating. *wild gesticulating*
My sleep in general has been an ever-changing beast. It used to be non-existent and stressful, full of screaming nightmares. When the buyout happened, sleep was only possible in chunks of a few hours and I could taste adrenaline every morning so was too keyed up to sleep any more than that. By the summer, sleep deprivation was so bad that my doc and I agreed to try Ambien just to get some hours logged at night. Now, my body craves more and more sleep, no matter how much I get.
SmolAc has been going around dripping like a faucet this week. Thankfully their throat isn’t painful anymore, it was earlier, but I’m still downing antivirals and directing them to the tissues. Crossing all the things that this one doesn’t overcome my faux immune system.
That temporary awful thing I’m dreading starts today. It won’t be that long in actual time but it’ll feel like four lifetimes. Wish me luck and survival?