Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (319)
July 13, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 69: Welp, this might be me paying the price for thinking I could do two medical things in a row: a massage to loosen up the lumps that pass for muscles and a vaccine in the same week. It feels roughly like a giant jumped on me with two feet. After an extra 10 hours in bed on Sunday, I’m still feeling well below baseline. That’s a spanner in the works for this week. I’ve got a donation pickup scheduled for tomorrow but that presupposed that all of Sunday was going to be sorting community donations. That didn’t happen. Instead, SmolAc, still sick much more dramatically than I am, in both senses of the word has continued cosplaying a barnacle stuck to my side today. We did drop off together, then did a bit of light gardening for outdoor air, then snacked painfully and slowly. Lego time saved us both for an hour.
Year 7, Day 70: I cancelled the donation pickup for today and settled myself in for just chaffeur duties, puttering and nursing care. Not a lot of puttering happened but they seem to be at least less feverish today. Good thing I set my expectations really low for one, and my job no longer matters for two.
Told PiC not to bother trying to spell me, his job performance still matters (maybe, who knows how they decide who to lay off) and mine doesn’t. I’m only doing the barest of minimums now because they’ve squeezed the last blood they’re gonna get from this stone. For the next two months it’s all about my health and my family’s needs and anything I can do to help my staff get jobs.
Year 7, Day 71: Finally got my garden delivery! Soil acidifier, compost, and more soil since the potatoes are going to need hilling before I know it. The winds like to carry off a thin layer of soil every time we turn around, and last night happened to be especially gusty. I dug into the acidifier and compost first, spreading it around the blueberry and blackberry bushes. Fingers crossed that was done right / enough. I need help lugging out the 3 cubic foot bag of soil which – that sack and I barely made it into the garage so there it’s staying until I have a second big-enough pair of hands. SmolAc is currently in a mostly helpful phase so 70% chance they would pipe up “I can help you, Mommy!” and 100% chance they would be crushed under the bag.
Meanwhile I’m sprouting wee sugar snap peas in cotton out of pure curiosity and it’s neat to actually see the little sprout as it shows to come to the surface preparatory to emerging from the seed. No clue where they’re going to go. They can’t go in the bag that used to be dedicated to them, the mold spores are waiting to pounce. Could they thrive at the top of the potatoes soil mounds alongside the green beans that will be planted once the soil is heaped up? Worth a shot. My gardening is very haphazard.
Year 7, Day 72: Big medical mail day. I’ve been waiting on a reprint of a prescription receipt for 7 weeks for FSA redemption and last week had given up on it arriving. Even deleted it from my to so list so naturally here it is! The FSA would be maxed out eventually with or without it – therapy and medications add up. Next year I’ll be missing having two FSAs badly. My Ambien refill landed as did JB’s meds and the SPF 50 sunscreen we’re trying.
Speaking of Ambien, it’s a new as needed prescription. I haven’t had to use it too often, sheer fatigue has been enough many nights, but when I do it’s worked reasonably well. So far there haven’t been any weird sleep-calls or texts or purchases. That I know of. Hopefully Sleep Me is simply too uncoordinated to buy anything while on Ambien. My sleep set up has finally stabilized too. These days, I layer two shirts, plus a heating pad for the muscle aches, and layer 1 Oodie blanket and a beautiful gift quilt on top. That combination seems to ward off the cycle of temperature dysregulation of sweating a royal mess and then waking up shivering from having sweated through a shirt and hoodie (so gross).
Year 7, Day 73: My Bing point total isn’t high enough for a redemption but I do my research in advance of having enough points to redeem. Except that 3 for 3 redemption options are all out of stock and I AM NOW FORMING A CONSPIRACY THEORY. Something is wrong there??? Are my points going to disappear?? All my efforts gone for naught? I hope not. (A friend pointed out that it lines up with corporate shenanigans at the end of the quarter which actually makes a lot of sense – I recently learned that corporations will do crappy stuff like refuse to pay their freelancers for 2-4 weeks leading up to the end of the quarter or after. Just garbage behavior.)
*She was probably right. Once the quarterly earnings were reported, along with 4800 layoffs, the ability to redeem points was magically back.
I’ve squeezing every single earning opportunity big and tiny because, of course, every penny counts. It goes into the mental piggybank for after the severance comes out.
We got a big check this week reimbursing past out of network medical care which was a happy surprise. It was immediately chopped up to cover upcoming big bills: dental expenses for 2 (2026), auto and home insurance, the little left shores up the property tax account. That settles my stomach a little bit.