Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (238)
December 23, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 243: For many reasons I feel zero holiday cheer so far. PiC got the tree up, and it’s nice to see the shiny sparkly but I’m just not feeling it. Busy-ness is definitely a factor. Everything (in the world) also feels so much harder than it needs to be. Every day with the kids is a whole lot of struggle. On the plus side, I’m not feeling the deep-seated anxiety that I usually feel around family stuff this time of year. Am I just too tired to? Maybe! But also I noticed that working through things in therapy and I am no longer feeling the anxiety-driven need to pack for these things six months out.
Lack of anxiety – good, lack of energy driven by the anxiety – less good.
It was another struggle today with brain fog and a storm passing through at the same time. Work was much tougher than it should have been.
But lots of packages arrived today! They were the key ones: books and treats I have to pack up by Wednesday for distribution. Whew. I was sweating the books package the most but a few other things were also important.
I hate this for Cloud @ Wandering Scientist. Her daughter caught whooping cough at school and now Cloud is sick too which ruins her plans to shop for presents in person. This reminds me of how much of my life is centered around doing most things 1-2 months in advance because odds are high that I’ll get sick, overwhelmed, or fatigued, or all of the above if I leave important things until near the day of.
Year 5, Day 244: Joe Udo at Retire by 40 has been retired for 12 years already! That really flew by. In his housekeeping post, he said: For 2024, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for those under 50. If you’re over 50 like me, you can contribute up to $8,000. The Roth IRA is the best retirement account because you don’t have to pay tax when you withdraw from the account. Everyone should max out their Roth IRA every year. If you haven’t maxed out your contribution yet, now is a great time to do it. Actually, the deadline for 2024 is April 15th. But I like to contribute in the same calendar year to keep it simple.
I don’t have any such advice. I had to max out a 401K this year, and we haven’t contributed to our Roth IRAs for a few years. I stopped contributing to the traditional IRA as well since I wasn’t getting a tax benefit from it and didn’t want to be constrained by RMDs in all our accounts.
I threw together our New Year cards and ordered them today. It’s too late to get them in the mail before I’m steamrolled by the holidays, but that doesn’t matter! Because they’re New Year cards and can go out in January! Go me, planning ahead for potential failures for once. And buying them at 60% off for a custom design at Office Depot made them much more affordable. Updates to farflung family and friends are nice, better when it doesn’t cost $200+. Plenty of people use Minted and other fancier services but it just doesn’t rank that high in my spending plans. I have to conserve our dollars for direct aid to folks (Larime, Linda Tirado) and others.
Year 5, Day 245: Smol Acrobat has been wandering about like a cranky old fogey grumping out of the blue, “but I wanted sushi!” every few days. They never tell us they want sushi at any point where it would have done any good, mind you, they’re just rolling up with a grievance while we’re putting together dinner as if we’d taken a poll and rejected their ask. Strong reaction from the kid who only eats cucumber rolls! I should give them a bowl of slivered cucumber on rice with a side of nori and see if that solves the problem.
Year 5, Day 246: I was reviewing Smol Acrobat’s doctor’s visit notes to find their height, I’m trying to get their Global Entry applications ready, and was very pleased to see that the doc recorded my request for a 6 month booster of the COVID vaccine next spring and approved it. I appreciate it when people listen to me and do what’s necessary without having to be told twice!
The GE application process is a total pain right now though. I had to change a detail for JB but I can’t do it myself, I need them to. Six emails in, they’re still insisting they changed it already and I’m sending screenshots of how they changed it (incorrectly) in one place but not the other place so I still can’t move forward. My “thanks for any help you can provide” is getting more and more sarcastic with every repetition.
My nightmares are back even though I’m still taking the prazosin. They’re not as intense as they used to be, yet, but still decidedly impactful. I usually remember the dreaming when I wake up pretty clearly but this one lingered all day: we were in small boats crossing oceans and meeting people we sort of knew in some faraway unknown places. I suspect it came from a pondering on the diaspora of boat people from Vietnam and how my cousins 20 years older than me lived that and remember it clearly.
Year 5, Day 247: Our car insurance went up 18% in the summer, and I just got the notification that it’s gone up again another 15%. What the hell??
Also annoying: I have blisters or blister type pain on almost all my toes today. The tops, sides and bottoms, variably. What did I do wrong now?? I asked each toe individually, why are you suddenly such a bad neighbor? I gleaned zero satisfactory information from this interrogation.
Searching the internets, specifically Mayo Clinic since general Googling is useless these days, didn’t turn up anything super useful but it did teach me about Bullous pemphigoid. Things could be much worse, is what they’re telling me. Still, having pretty much all toes hurt isn’t great.
