Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (245)
February 10, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 288: A pain flare kicked my ass this weekend. Still is. Some of it’s probably the barometric pressure shifting on me, a good amount of it will be the stress lately and sleeping badly because Smol Acrobat bunked with us for a couple nights. “I wike your bed better, it’s bigger den our bed” they observed. Then why did I keep waking up to you sleeping on my head?
Trudeau’s speech made me sad in that, yes! We know this is unhinged behavior that none of us (North Americans who aren’t garbage) want and we’re also fighting what feels like a losing battle against it all. We’re still fighting but man was it hard not to feel so much shame to be an American in this moment.
“I hate most people, it takes all of my skill to hide that!” – Blake, Madam Secretary.
Boy do I feel that.
Half my day was eaten up with calls. I’m living my nightmare job right now. May this pass soon.
Contacted all our Congresspeople to vote against these nominations.
Year 5, Day 289: My stress cravings are getting very specific. I catch myself wanting a Cinnabon most days. Or an old fashioned donut plus a donut hole. Or a ribeye. Today, though, I survived on a glamorous half inch slice of quiche and small Gatorade because I had no appetite. My pain was so intense last night that I caved and took a tramadol. I’ve not taken one in two years for a very good reason: it alleviates my pain for a little while and then I pay for it five times over with side effects. Feeling like my bones are lava has become almost routine on bad days, but this is Day 3 of extremely high pain. So high that it actually distracted me from work. Work is usually my way of distracting myself from the pain and it’s rare for anything to break my hyperfocus when that’s in gear. The tramadol bought me 3 hours of blunted tolerable pain. It also bought me 18 hours of severe nausea. These trade-offs are NOT worth it. But what choice do I have? We really need better pain control options. This is awful.
PiC had to take over my school runs and JB’s activities today because I felt so awful. I couldn’t even feel guilty.
Year 5, Day 290: Pacing myself this week has been the pits. I’ve been mostly bedridden because sitting and standing are so fatiguing they send my pain through the roof into the stratosphere. I refuse to take the tramadol again, that is SO not worth it.
You know what’s great? Giant spoonful of peanut butter. Can’t take away pain or fatigue or that river of lava flowing through my bones but it is DELICIOUS.
Was super proud of a friend who has committed to making calls to Senators even though it was hard for her. I provided all the scripts and phone numbers I had collected from Celeste Pewter and cheered her from bed.
Year 5, Day 291: From Courtney Milan’s newsletter, the word I was searching for last week for this surreal moment in time: “I learned a word this week: hypernormalization.
It’s the word people used to describe what was happening in the Soviet bloc countries in the 1970s and 1980s, as people went about their daily lives deeply aware that the center would not hold, that everything was falling apart, but with nothing left to do but pretend that life would go on as they understood it.
It’s a word that encompasses the moment when a large number of us know what is happening to our country—know what we are seeing—but engage in a mass, country-wide kayfabe to keep on doing the things we need to do to survive as individuals, even knowing that some individuals won’t make it and that the world we know is rapidly deteriorating around us.”
I think she’s 100% right about this too: “I firmly believe that if nothing is done, historians will place the end of the United States as a democratic, constitutional republic somewhere between a few days ago and a few months from now.”
I’ve been checking in on my people and making sure they know we’re here for them. I don’t know how, or if, this country survives these body blows. Maybe it doesn’t. But we as individuals and people may survive if we take care of each other.
We expect a few lump sums of money this year that’s mostly meant to pay for the roof but I’m also earmarking direct aid for people I’ll never meet offline who are in need or are community organizers or activists themselves.
Year 5, Day 292: I love Smitten Kitchen, I knew they wouldn’t fail me when I didn’t know how I was going to cook those spareribs I got on sale.
I spaced out the cooking process across DAYS because I haven’t been able to sit up or be out of bed most of this week. Mixed the spices one day. Dredged the ribs another session. Then popped them in the oven in the morning to bake for HOURS. A friend asked me how I get anything / everything done / survive between my health and my life. Well. This kind of budgeting is one way.
You know what’s funny about sending holiday cards super late? Five friends have texted me delighted to have received it. This doesn’t happen during the year-end holidays, no one cares or has time to care at that time of year.
Costco had no eggs and we are just about out. I feel vaguely like a failure of a quartermaster because I’m usually on top of these things and get enough supplies to hold us over for a while or ration supplies to make it stretch. PiC was advised to get there between 9 and 10 am to get eggs so they do have some, they just run out quickly. 
I am so so sorry that your body is giving you so much trouble.
Yay for sending late holiday cards, that’s great. I received one from a friend last week and it really did get more attention and appreciation than if it were one of four in the mailbox at a busy time of year.
Yay for Wisconsin. Boo for living in a potentially failed democracy. Yay for having the five calls app to call our people.