Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (282)
October 27, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 182: I woke up at 5 am with hands curled into claws. My fingers, stiff and swollen, couldn’t be straightened. At first I was confused but then I realized I’d done this to myself. The kids needed outdoor exercise time yesterday but my skeletal pain was so bad, I couldn’t take them to a park. I sat in the yard to play catch with them and have them run relays. Whoops. I could throw and catch yesterday, but that meant giving up the use of both hands for a while today.
I’ve been taking my anti-depressants in the morning for 5? days now. I think(?) it helps a bit with the lack of motivation and the rage during the day. It doesn’t help with the worrying over other people’s lives: bestie’s upcoming biopsy, a friend’s relationship is falling apart in an unexpected and painful way (where it’s not anyone’s fault) but their partner is also acting erratically so I worry about their financial stability especially in this economy. I know of at least two sets of people in my social online circles who are becoming unhoused or on the verge of. I give but I can’t solve these huge problems alone. I also feel so helpless now that I can’t rally any assistance from connections online. This feels weirdly isolating. It’s not about me but it’s miserable seeing so many people’s worlds fall apart.
I found a baggie of cleaned frozen mystery fish that a friend of ours caught. I decided to just bake it with some lemon juice, salt and pepper, and hope for the best. Buuut it was awful. Just terrible. Luckily, after I choked down several bites, I realized what it needed and whipped up a little bowl of mỡ hành from our countertop green onions. It was so much better. Childhood recipe memory to the rescue! This is why I hate cooking fish, I am used to eating really good fish from home recipes but I never learned so everything feels subpar.
Year 6, Day 183: After 4 hours of nightmares and 3 hours of trying to “rest” because I couldn’t force myself to get up predawn to get some work done, I had giant claw hands again today. I popped on my Peculiarity Shop rings for some sensory input that isn’t pain and carried on. Thankfully I had an unplanned and surprise gap in my schedule midday and instead of forcing myself to push through, I laid down for an hour. It made a real difference. I’m trying to be better about finding spots to rest when I feel terrible.
Bright spot, my crow friends visited today! And one of the usual pair is getting VERY brave. It was coming in faster and closer than it’s ever done before, and even hung out waiting for more treats even after we started puttering around in the driveway getting ready to leave. Usually that’s when they take off and put distance between us. Today they either waited on the roof or the car, and even hung on the driveway while I gently tossed treats in their direction.
Year 6, Day 184: Each night I try to sleep, fail miserably, and the next morning I struggle also miserably to stay awake as the sleep was worse than the night before. This week I’ve been trialing a combination of my full dose of prazosin for the nightmare warding, and a time release melatonin in hopes of having more peaceful and maybe prolonged sleep. I can deal with fatigue but that on top of the side effects that come with this much bad sleep, swollen painful hands and wrists plus the All new! Not improved! TMJ like pain because I’m clenching my jaws for hours, are a bit too much. Fingers crossed I can figure out a regimen that helps my body stop making everything bad worse.
SmolAc is aggrieved that they’re being left at TK without any family to keep them company or lovies to cuddle all day every day so each morning, they and JB conduct increasingly dramatic farewells. Bye! Byyeeeeee. Byyyyyyyeeeeeeee! One of these days, they will hit the exact note of melodrama that they are going for.
I defrosted chicken but couldn’t remember what I meant to make with it. PiC decided he’d take that chicken and make fajitas! He had to stop and pick up more ingredients which is a showstopper for me but he did and got dinner together. What a relief.
Year 6, Day 185: 6 lbs of bacon, green and grey. 💔 I don’t know what happened but my bacon all went bad. ☠️😭 Thankfully it was all Zingerman’s bacon, so they were very pleasant about replacing it.
In better news: the prazosin is warding off nightmares and I think I’m getting a handle on when to take it to minimize the side effects now. The extended release melatonin does nothing for me so I’m still waking up 3-5 times a night but it’s more of a muzzy fuzzy waking than the clenched fists-and-face, stress and anxiety dialed up to 12 wakings I’ve been having. Definitely an improvement. My jaw isn’t tender and out of whack which means I can eat! And chew! Glorious! My shoulder and knees are shot but heck I can hobble around with boulder knees, that’s fine.
Year 6, Day 186: Loads of work stress, but a temporarily reasonable amount of work waiting for me specifically today meant I could take the kids to the Halloween carnival thing at PiC’s work. They’re getting to dress up a few times this year, which is nice, they’re getting a good lot of mileage out of their costumes, and these things are mostly fun. Loads of free food (middling good) that the kids loved: hot dogs, nachos, cupcakes, brownies, rice krispie treats. SmolAc even liked the pasta salad.
Far too much time on my feet though, between 3-6 pm, and I paid dearly for that at night.
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I’m thinking about all the stressors of the world, people being on the verge of losing homes, SNAP benefits, having no income during this furlough, etc etc, and if I can scrape up the energy to put together a fundraiser to do mutual aid and the like. I will think on it.
Then I read this from Cat Valente and remember how good it was when we could help folks and maybe we can do this again?
That was a lovely story from Cat!!!! I’m so glad you shared that.
There is going to be SO much need and SO many fundraisers – maybe instead of creating a fundraiser & doing mutual aid, could you link to 2 or 3 really reputable ones? I worry about your mental load etc.
I worry about my mental load too 😬
But I share links most weeks, and I see that by itself, that doesn’t produce any traction. Partly that’s because my readership is small and I’ve never pursued a bigger audience so active fundraising tends to work better than my usual posts, since friends can share specific posts for fundraising across their networks.
Dear Revanche,
I am worried about you! You seem to really be the scapegoat, taking on all the sins of the world, with physical and mental pain. I hope you are able to find more niches/hours of rest.
I really admire you and I think you are doing an incredible job with your kids and your work and managing your illness AND helping others. Wishing you all the best.