By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (286)

November 24, 2025

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 210: JB broke their retainer and I can’t get the damn ortho to call me back. Our modem went down and required a VERY expensive replacement. I managed to replace that quickly only for the replacement to screw up our network setup, taking out my printer connection and screwing up our security system. Then my laptop starts blipping in and out several times a day, restarting on me with wild abandon, sometimes losing all my work, sometimes not. Then my phone dies which really feels like the kicker because that screws up everything and it’s going to take HOURS, and energy that I don’t have, to fix this problem.

I’m exhausted and at the end of my rope and want to cry.

And yet.

As tired as I am, as sick as I am, as bone deep annoyed as I am, I’m incredibly lucky that if the only way to solve these problems is money, it would sting, but I could do it. Money can’t buy me more time, or a working immune system, or feeling better but it can solve each of the problems above if fixing it isn’t possible.

So I take a huge deep breath. Several more. Call the ortho again. Go through tech support for a while, no dice on troubleshooting the phone. Get offered a discount code for a new phone – not my preferred route but I’m not covered in the GOOD luck fairy dust so I’ll take that. Get an appointment to deal with the phone. Schedule all of JB’s math tutoring lessons for the year. Get a quote for the phone. Things are in motion. That’s better than lounging in the trough of despair.

Year 6, Day 211: TIL that some credit cards have cell phone protection coverage. I thought I knew all the credit card benefits out there, but this is completely new to me.

Since so many of my day to day apps require an actual working phone, right now, I had to cough up the money for a new phone. I set up the mail in repair order, that’s $400 in hopes I can get my data back. If I can’t, at least an otherwise reasonably working phone will be available for use – I have an offer for a free phone line through Xfinity for a year. I wouldn’t rely on them for any regular use phones but that’ll do fine for a back up phone. JB’s activity fees landed today, too, so that’s $3000 out the door.

And there’s my heating pad quitting on me. I just ordered the same one again without taking time to be distressed about it because at this rate, I can’t keep up with all the things demanding replacement if I spend time having feelings about it. *flop*

Year 6, Day 212: My cough is still a giant rattle in my chest but it’s possible I might be turning a corner today. I don’t feel good but also don’t quite feel horrible either.

Tech heavy day: getting the new phone set up, fighting with log ins, changing my 2FA so that it doesn’t rely solely on my phone, learned that in Slack DMs, you can just click over to a files view to find that file your colleague shared with you a few months back but you couldn’t remember precisely when. Handy!

I’ve been given two absolutely impossible directives to reconcile at work and I don’t even know how we’re going to do this amid the sheer gutwrenching stress of having the goalposts moved on us multiple times throughout the year. I have so many regrets and “should have known” and at the same time, I bet if I had known, they still wouldn’t have listened to me protest and we’d still be in the same kind of boat.

It’s deeply upsetting after everyone’s hard work all year to be told none of it matters because the highly inflated totally unrealistic numbers weren’t met.

Year 6, Day 213: We were furious to hear that another kid had attacked JB trying to grab the mask off their face at their self defense class earlier this week. I’m surprised I was able to sleep the prior nights even while I was thinking about who I was going to talk to about it, picking and discarding one possible person after another – testament to how absolutely exhausted I am every day now that my anxiety can’t keep me awake when just three weeks ago my stress anxiety stopped letting me sleep. My congestion is slowly clearing up, and my coughs are less death rattle today, I wonder whether stress insomnia or total fatigue will win at nights once the virus has cleared my system

About JB. They didn’t want me to tell anyone because they didn’t want to get singled out or embarrassed. I admonished them that we don’t let people get away with this stuff when we have any leverage to stop it – if we do, they think it’s ok and carry on doing it. At this age, it’s important to correct and really important to impress on them – you stop when people say no.

I had firm words with the person in charge, and they actually dealt with it reasonably appropriately, so that was a relief. For now. I’ll be watching that kid.

My old phone has reached the repair center who declares I’m eligible for a refurbished replacement phone. I suspect that means they’re giving me another phone and my data is farewell forever – support chat confirmed it. Wah wah sad trombone. I knew that was possible and I’m sad but there’s nothing more to be done but to accept. It’s not like NOT repairing it would save my data. Alas, my texts weren’t backed up so those are gone forever.

Year 6, Day 214: Big day for JB and friends. They have been working hard on their art and I’ve been working hard to helping them create sellable merch with their art. I want them to learn from this experience about quality and presentation and the math of creating art to sell.

It was a long night, but comparatively very short, market they sold at. It was only two hours for the actual event. We were there over three hours to make sure they got a good spot, were set up early, and knew what to do and how to do it. The whole event was kid-centric within the community so people were motivated to spend money and support the kids. They didn’t have to pay a table fee or transport costs, it was local so they didn’t have to pay for hotel etc costs.

They will have to deduct their materials costs from their cash intake to reimburse me for their supplies – I want them to know how to do that and what the reality is between creation of art and selling to what kind of wage you can make by creating and selling art. It was a good training wheels for younguns event. I was extra proud of them because you could tell the kids were not primarily responsible for the work at a lot of the other kid booths. They were, as much as possible. I helped a lot with the parts they needed help with and then I had them do the majority of the work after that. I’ll be beat up from being on my feet and talking so much on the sale floor but I hope they remember some of the lessons. PiC insists this will be a core memory. I hope he’s right.