February 19, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 321: (TMI for those of you who don’t track your pets’ every movement, literally.)
Sera and I had the weirdest morning walk that we’ve ever had. She was wearing her “on a mission (to poop, probably)” face at her “on a mission (to poop, probably)” trotting pace. But she’d already pooped, twice, even! She even did the weird boy-dog attempt to squeeze out a few more drops of pee. She’s never done that before, nor has she basically decided that she was going to go for a much longer walk and I could come along if I wanted but she was GOING. I had to coax her to turn back around to go home. She trotted most of the way back, too.
*****
Every Monday takes a bigger bite out of me than the last. I was grinding my teeth by 10 am facing down the mountain of nonsense work added to my usual overflowing plate. That doesn’t usually happen until I’m asleep. This isn’t a good development.
A friend reminded me that I’m only one person. Then I reminded me I am terrible at pacing myself when faced with a giant list of things to do, maybe work on that by not trying to vanquish everything before noon? I hated my suggestion but reality bites.
I was also having a sensory thing. My fingernails were apparently two millimeters too long, and the way they landed on the keys irritated me beyond all reason. I clipped my nails and that helped a little.
*****
Given my tizzy last week, this was ironic: Sitting down to dinner, Smol Acrobat requested “a call”. A call with whom? “A call wif Wee’s school!” They wanted to listen to a PTA meeting! 🤦🏻♀️😅
Year 4, Day 322: 3 hours of sleep last night thanks to painsomnia. There’s something really insulting about knowing you’re in too much pain to sleep, but also knowing that for every hour you can’t fall asleep, that sleep deprivation will drive the pain higher.
Plus 3 hours of my day taking Sera 🐶 to her consult. Utter and complete wipeout sort of day. I wanted a nap when we got home. I got another hour to work before school pickup and an hour to work before after school activity. I’m so tired I could cry but the pain has ridden with me all day so that’s not a good prospect for a good night of sleep.
JB leapt to be extra helpful when they understood just how depleted I was after we picked up fast food for dinner. They helped prep the rice and my meds and set the table and played with Smol Acrobat as soon as they came home, keeping their spirits up so they didn’t dissolve into the usual post-homecoming sulks because they want to play but it’s dinner time. (Fried chicken on the table won the little one over, truth be told.) They and PiC did their best to pull the nighttime duties from me so I could try to rest. For my part I tried not to feel guilty for needing accommodations / help, and worked on breaking the pain cycle. My bones have increasingly felt like lava for three days, usually it kicks in at night but it lingered all day today, so I used heat and massage gun and heat again. When that didn’t shake it, I turned to my last resort of pain meds cocktail.
Year 4, Day 323: I can’t recall if I shared this article link with y’all but it has been on my mind since I first read it: A discovery in the muscles of long COVID patients may explain exercise troubles. My fatigue has always puzzled me. I could feel the differing levels so clearly and it always bothered me that I could walk up a hill one day and the next day, be winded halfway up the hill. And the next day, even more winded. It made me feel like I was deconditioned.
I’ve always used the analogy that my tank is never full. Sleep and rest never bring my tank back up to full, they just pull the indicator back up to slightly above the red empty line. It’s clear my body gets depleted over and over at a faster rate than others but what else can you do to refuel it if food and sleep hardly do anything?
These bits hit home:
Among the most striking findings were clear signs that the cellular power plants, the mitochondria, are compromised and the tissue starved for energy.
In his own research, Systrom has found evidence of abnormal oxygen uptake by the skeletal muscles during peak exercise in both long COVID and ME/CFS patients, which indicates there’s a problem with oxygen delivery to the mitochondria.
Most nights I’ve been feeling unbearably tired, dragging myself through the last hours of the evening to collapse into bed. Most mornings I’d roll out of bed because sitting up was too hard, I felt too heavy and exhausted, and I was existing solely through sheer willpower despite my desperation to just quit. Some of that was the weight of some incredibly fraught family conflicts. Finally facing up to them in therapy and out of therapy literally took some of that weight off my body. I could breathe more freely. But I was still, am still, fatigued from things that wouldn’t have fazed old me ten times over. This is now a largely imaginary memory of old me, I guess, of a young me with youth and vitality?
I’ve experimented with increasing my dose of coQ10, one of the supplements the ME/CFS people advised me to add for a few weeks now. I probably should have documented this a little better than just blogging about it but it does seem like the weighty feeling of fatigue overall is a touch lower these days even despite the higher than ever stress levels and feeling like I’m juggling too many balls for any one person at work.
Year 4, Day 324: Enervating day. Ran JB to school, then ran Sera to the vet for bloodwork (1 hour), then worked briefly before diving into 2 back to back conference calls. I just wanted to curl up and nap or cry, or both, when I got off the calls. They weren’t difficult calls, it’s just the amount of energy it takes these days to TALK to people and keep up that professional front takes more than I’ve got in the tank.
Because I’m completely pandering to Sera’s demands these days, I moved my work into the bedroom and worked from bed after hours so that she wouldn’t have to come stare at me in the office, asking me to go to bed, late at night. Somehow 9 pm turned into 10 pm and then turned into 11 pm before I called it quits but it meant that there was a little bit less pressure when things happened to cut into my working hours. As they keep doing.
*****
This year JB has a whole week off next week, instead of two long weekends, and they were going to do a weekend trip to visit family except everyone they meant to visit came down with COVID. We’re scrambling to figure out how to schedule next week, now, but I’m so relieved we heard about it before they left.
*****
PiC gleaned info from a parent volunteer thing he attended: the pair of parents in JB’s year who have been the most prominently active in the PTA until this year were actively recruited for some committee for the fourth grade year and they bowed out saying this is their last year, they’re burned out. I guess that answers one of my questions!
Year 4, Day 325: JB had a fun field trip today but sadness strikes (elsewhere) again. After only 4 hours at daycare, I got a call that Smol Acrobat wasn’t feeling well, had a slight fever, and needed to go home. I dashed out to pick them up and after a long wait while they napped, we made our slow and sad way home. They settled in to read a book with PiC and got a second much needed nap while I worked.
Then found out that a person I respect, though I only knew her online, Fiqah, had died. She’s been ill a long time from Long COVID and suffered greatly in her last months, having to crowdfund for housing and medical care. I’ve known her for… must be over a year?
She was a friend of a friend, when I started to contribute to her crowdfunding regularly for care and other needs, and I developed my own relationship with her directly over time. I never got to know her at her best, only in the worst year and change of her life when she was ill, terminally so, and suffering greatly from the effects of Long COVID. Yet even in her last days, she was still smart, kind, empathetic, and rightfully furious at a world that’s failing all of us. She was a lovely human with incisive wit and intellect, and she deserved so much better. She wished to die housed, and she was when she went, and I’m glad for her but it’s such a basic thing that a person shouldn’t have to HOPE or wish for.
I hate how this world keeps failing good people stuck in the margins while the evil people keep thriving. I hate that we have to continually do the calculus of how many people we can help, and how much, and how often, without endangering our own financial health because we have kids and who has a safety net at the other end of things if not of our own making? I had to decide which of several mutual aid needs we could assist with every month and how much, while still paying our bills. It’s a demoralizing calculation. How do we balance people’s very real needs today against our very real future needs that we have to assume is entirely our own burden to carry? Who knows if anyone will be able to help us when our time comes. More than ever, I feel bereft of community and feel/know we’re on our own when disaster or problems befall us. But these precious people are here, today, and deserve to live and thrive, too. It’s heartbreaking.
February 12, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 314: I’ll do a full write-up later. Our power is still out today, internet is still down, my phone’s data connectivity is next to nothing. The kids are sick, I have a sore throat and a huge workload, and we spent too much of the day navigating choked roads to get to a safe place where we could connect to the internet and charge the devices enough to get us through the day and night.
The county libraries were all open to the public for water, snacks, and charging.
I’ll tell you what, functioning by lamplight, with only power for the fridge and no other appliances, really narrows your focus on what you can do. No dishwasher, no vacuuming the mess tracked in from the storm, no toaster oven, no microwave, no hair dryers, no space heaters, no heating pad.
We still have running water and plumbing, and gas to heat food and the water for bathing, and I cannot tell you how thankful I was for that much. We are so not equipped for the loss of power, internet, gas AND running water.
Year 4, Day 315: POWER IS BACK. It’s weird to see the utterly still blue sky, with one enormous grey cloud hovering as if copy-pasted in place, after the stormy weekend with all the challenges and consequences. We get a one day reprieve, then it rains again tomorrow. I think that may be the end of the wet for a handful of days.
I may have overdone it trying to right the ship doing all the things this morning: 3 loads of laundry, ran the vacuum twice, ran the dishwasher, while trying to catch up on a couple hundred emails and projects.
With JB home sick another day, and trying to heft an unbelievable amount of work, I’ve been on edge and snappish. I decided JB won’t be going to their class this afternoon. They probably have the energy to and would be fine (masked as always) but I needed to take any one damn thing off my plate and that was my pick. It was a good call.
Smol Acrobat came home meowing sadly. They’re running a slight fever, appear flushed, and tell us “I’m not feew-wing well.” Their throat hurts and they’ve got that weird dry congestion that doesn’t result in a drippy nose, just leaves you feeling stuffed up with no relief. I had to spoonfeed them their dinner. I pulled out the remaining frozen half of the Japanese curry I cooked a while back for dinner. Thanks two weeks ago me!
We’re in for a rough night. Well, PiC is. He’s been fielding all the nights for a while. Even if he hadn’t, Smol Acrobat switched from wanting Mom cuddles and feeding at dinner to the quavery: “Daddy, can you take care of me?” and only wanting Daddy to give them their medicine and prepare them for bed.
Year 4, Day 316: JB hacking coughed their way through the night, Smol Acrobat sobbed and fussed through the night. I offered to take over at 2 am but PiC waved me off. In the end that was for the best, I needed that sleep pretty badly and Smol Acrobat had to stay home with us today with that fever. We traded off work time slots throughout the day.
They were surprisingly chipper, despite their very rough night, and managed a halfway decent nap midday. I was so tempted to lay down with them but I’d just get mad having to get back up again even if I napped. As a night ogre, the waking up transition at any time is unpleasant.
JB and I also had an appt at the orthodontist after school. They’re headed for braces in a few months. Sigh.
Texting with an old high school classmate who’s visiting our old teachers brought on the sads of a blobby amorphous feeling that I don’t belong anywhere in meatspace. I think this is about feeling very disconnected from the friend groups online and off. One of my closest daily friends has dropped out of contact for almost two years now, and I miss them deeply. I know it was for their own reasons, I respect that, I just miss them. (Separately, it makes me wonder if I’m just a bad friend because I’m the only one who was dropped. Maybe I’m just too much of whatever I am.) It’s gotten worse since Twitter went to pieces and my social web was destroyed. I have this space, some folks in the Discord and a bit of Bluesky, I peek into Instagram because I was forced to create one for the business. It feels scattered. That sense of wide connectedness is gone. Even though I still text with a handful of friends from the ‘nets, I feel out of sync with myself and with the world, emotionally.
I had to do a Murderbot and face the wall this evening for a minute when the feelings were too much. I’m in the middle of Network Effect right now and very much empathize with Murderbot. I hate feelings. 😔
Year 4, Day 317: Frost everywhere this morning! Aftermath cleanup continues. I’ve finished recharging all the lanterns and the Yeti. That just leaves the crank radio to charge. It can be charged by cranking of course, that’s the point of it, but why not save our arms if we can charge it ahead of time. So I finally get JB to school, load Smol Acrobat up for their ride with PiC, clean up a bit around the house and reheat my breakfast eggs. Sit down and really start to dig into emails and urgent morning work stuff. Take a bite of egg. Miss a text. See a call come in from PiC: they got a flat tire 3 miles away from daycare. ARGH. The full round trip rescue ate my morning. Who put this curse on us? It’s one thing after another this week. Relentless.
We had to skip JB’s afterschool class again because I could not handle losing another 2 hour chunk of my time today. It’s all management work today and I don’t fancy working until 11 pm again. (That was last night.) It wasn’t until dinnertime that I remembered my whole breakfast, lunch, and snack was a plate of scrambled eggs and half a box of Wheat Thins. Not ideal.
There were “this is where rain may fall again Thursday!” headlines that I waved off and YEP! IT WAS US. PiC and Smol Acrobat got caught out biking home. They were drenched.
Year 4, Day 318: Work work everywhere, as far as the eye can see. This was my first mostly uninterrupted workday all week. I was desperate for one but didn’t dare say it out loud for fear of triggering another spontaneous combustion of my day. I’m not at all recovered from the week but having gotten through the worst of the workload, I can finally say TGIF.
Also not great: PiC’s company is a multinational one so from their POV this isn’t (maybe) that big a deal but from ours it is: They just laid off a couple hundred people. Still no idea on how much of this will roll over to his department, and we wouldn’t know until it hit. He’s not high enough up to be privy to those conversations.
February 5, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 307: JB has the day off so they are running errands with me and having a second tutoring session with the second of two teachers I booked to try to help them get a grip on fractions.
I squeezed in some hours of work over the weekend to clear more of my inbox of the routine stuff so I’d have time to do errands without falling too far behind. The only good thing about that is when I hit “Exasperation: HIGH”, I can walk away. Not so much during the week.
I overdid it both days on the weekend on the personal side too: cleaning the house on Saturday, walking the kids to the park on Sunday for an hour-long outing, and passed out both afternoons when I was resting from the exertion and the pain it stirred up. It’s not a pain flare, it’s more of a pain … volcano bubbling up? There are no good analogies for this stuff. But after being on my feet for any amount of time, my back and hips ache and burn. That pain combined with the fatigue knocked me on my butt. I’ve been taking 200 mg of CoQ10 daily on the recommendation of the ME/CFS folks at Kaiser but this week I’m experimenting with upping that to 300 mg daily. Their recommendation for magnesium is only one tenth the amount that my body prefers, so there’s always a chance that the same principle applies to some of the other supplements. Here’s hoping that the increase doesn’t set off any/many side effects.
In the garden, my onions are now on Day 146 after planting day, and the green tops are still not turning yellow and falling over. They aren’t even from seed, they’re from sprouted onions we broke down and planted! The guidelines all gave rough ranges of 90-125 days from planting, growing, and ready to harvest. Do we have mutant onions? Do we have onions at all? Do we just have onion tops that won’t stop growing and nothing underground? Is it weird that I’m afraid to poke around and find out lest I somehow disturb and therefore destroy them?
I’ve never grown onions before, obviously, this is all strange.
Year 4, Day 308: A friend shared a TikTok about a cat who needed a bit of sedation before going back to the vet and the mental image of the little cat face, pupils dilated and totally stoned, with the little mrow? got to me. Having never had the slightest curiosity about drugs in any way, and hardly any interest in alcohol, the “must be nice to be checked out of reality for a bit” sentiment is new to me. I’m not seeking it, my reasons for never experimenting still stand, but it’s telling how overwhelmed I’m feeling right now.
I’ve been working late hours all month, trying to catch up from the holidays and then sickness and then sickness and then exhaustion… And work is its own maelstrom of stress right now in so many ways.
Then we had JB’s self defense class and we got assigned homework which made me regret picking this place that expects parents to practice with their kids as if we have the time and energy to do that on top of taking them to classes. Then the part of me that knows it’s important to do that practice at home feels guilty because they’re not going to improve without support. And it is so important to me that they learn these skills so I have to provide that support. So we practiced after dinner which sucked because they didn’t take it seriously and kept giggling and I was at the end of my rope already anyway so that made me mad and while we hugged after it was all over there was a lot of snapping and sternness during the practice session because I hate it when people disrespect my time and very limited energy. Even if people = my own kid.
Tiny bright side: Smol Acrobat actually ate most of their dinner without being fed or fussing. I had to help with a bit of their salad but they ate the pasta and oranges on their own.
Further disheartening: Sera’s bloodwork came back and while she’s responded to the steroids, her liver enzymes are now going up and that’s not good at all.
It’s only been 3 days on the increased CoQ10 but isn’t it supposed to increase my energy? I feel so depleted.
Year 4, Day 309: Big storm moving in today.
Courtney Milan’s warning about apocalypse food brought up a funny/weird thing I have. In January 2020, when it seemed like things were going the wrong way with COVID, PiC went to the store and picked up a variety of canned foods that would keep.
It turns out that while I have a great imagination for things I will crave, I do not have the ability to continue wanting that food when we have it in stock. It’s like my prepper appetite was satisfied by the acquisition and my body just shuts down any desire to actually EAT that food. Granted, we were never in a position where food scarcity was enough of a problem that we HAD to rely on them. But still.
Year 4, Day 310: I have hit my limit, again. Today, everything was too much.
I was looking forward to our friend visiting in a couple weeks but she cancelled. I’m hurt and frustrated, this is the second time our getting together has been canceled because some other thing was a higher priority, and because getting new plans together is a whole effort.
I’m unsettled and frustrated with Sera’s health mystery and pre-grieving that this might be cancer. We don’t know yet but what data we do have points to cancer more than not.
There was a shooting just a few blocks away from us and we weren’t alerted even though the campus was secured (not fully locked down).
I’m still grieving the loss of my friend.
My boss is in some upper management tizzy and keeps interrupting my day to give me new priorities (which were already my priorities, what do you think I spend my time doing??) and then to ask me a dozen questions so I can’t attend to the priorities.
Everyone needed something from me today.
I also have to recruit, hire and train more staff to support the team which is a whole other job in and of itself.
Customers are continuing to be just The Worst.
The frustration with trying to help JB but not helping enough is sitting like a cold lump in my gut.
Parent teacher conferences are coming up again.
Smol Acrobat was eating guacamole which they used to dislike, then completely melted down over eating broccoli which they said was their favorite two days ago. TODDLERS.
JB wanted to compete in a thing in April and I didn’t want them to because it’ll require a lot of time and attention from me to support their prep but then they changed their mind because they’re intimidated by another kid (who is competitive) and I hate that reason. I’d be fine if they chose not to participate because they didn’t want to this time but to opt out because another kid’s better than them is a terrible reason. But at the same time, I also don’t want to be roped into this. Conflicted.
I’ve worked late most nights this month and I am TIRED.
There were some small bright spots in the week that carried me from one frustration to the next. I had good interactions with the crow murder coming by for treats. Our neighbors got a puppy and shared pictures. I conducted an interview that seemed promising. (Please cross your fingers that they’re a good fit for us long-term! I hate recruiting, I hate hiring, I hate training. But I love having gotten through all those transitions and having a solid team.)
Year 4, Day 311: Our floor desperately needs mopping and there are crumbs everywhere. The robot vacuum was a great compromise for my inability to (or lack of time) vacuum as much as I want but there isn’t a good answer to the mopping/everyday other cleaning. I started thinking about how maybe if we dropped something optional from our budget we could afford to hire help, like babysitters who can take the kids to things or cleaners, but then I can’t think of anything that’s easy to give up. The only thing that we spend on that doesn’t benefit us personally at all off the top of my head is mutual aid, just giving cash to people / friends who need it, and that’s not really something I’d consider optional or ok to trade. Then again, I have trust issues with people driving my kids and PiC’s got trust issues with people cleaning our house so maybe it’s just as well we spend where we spend. Though, arguably, hiring people to help us would be helping those people by paying them but it’s still not a help to our far away friends who are laid off or cannot work and need to pay rent.
We had another PTA meeting and people were talking about the need for new volunteers for the PTA, and to run the Science Fair, and so on and there were people who just kept volunteering for stuff. HOW do these people have the time and energy for all this?? I can get my kid to and from school, and attend parent teacher conferences and listen to the PTA meetings over dinner when they are hybrid. We can’t make it when they’re in person. Who has time to take on the running of a Science Fair and PTA positions and and and? I know at least one of the moms and I know she works in addition to her two kids, along with some of the more visible parents who are also working parents. I just don’t get it. It makes me feel like I’m failing at something. To be clear, I don’t want one more thing on my plate. I want many things OFF my plate. This is probably me feeling jealous that others have the money or time or energy or help or all of the above that makes it possible for them to want to take on optional things like PTA related activities. I suppose the guilt there is knowing that the PTA stuff does support the kids’ education and educational experience, so it’s not frivolous. It’s just not something we have room for.
My autistic friend sent this to me, it’s so her, and I laughed so much. That was much needed.
Surprisingly I don’t feel as drained or despairing today as I normally do on Fridays. Is there any chance that the 300 mg of coQ10 might be helping? Or maybe the fact I remembered to do back stretches two whole times this week?
January 29, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 300: A thunderstorm roared through last night. We would have slept right through it like cozy babies but Sera needed a quick outing at midnight to make sure her bladder wouldn’t be too stressed this morning (because of her steroids). You should have seen the look she gave me. You want ME to go out in THAT??
Anyway, that was a necessary soaking because at 7 am sharp she was click-clacking to the front door because she needed to go out again. It would have been much worse, and earlier, if we hadn’t gone out at midnight. As tired as I was, it meant that everyone got up and out on time for the first time in weeks.
The kids have been generally cooperative for the past couple weeks. It’s weird. There are the usual hiccups and temper tantrums and all that but it’s on the very mild end of the range. I have to hold on to the memory of this when we move into the next phase of very uncooperative.
A loved one is going through a medical thing right now. Not quite a crisis but it could be one if their body doesn’t respond to the medications. Something like Sera, I suppose, except their medical issue currently has a more clearcut set of pretty dire consequences if they don’t respond to the medication route. I’m checking on them daily and worrying in the back of my mind.
(more…)
January 22, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 293: It’s a holiday Monday, but not a day off work for me, so we were going to do a bit of juggling today. PiC was going to take the kids to play somewhere so I could get work done, I was going to have therapy. Then we’d have the contractor stop by to finish up a project. However. We thought we were approaching the clear on Saturday because Smol Acrobat had stopped vomiting (Zofran, a miracle drug), and Sera’s bloodwork came back with NOT dire results. We ran her back to the vet for more diagnostics and agreed on a treatment plan for the following week. I was still coaxing her to eat, unsuccessfully. Overnight, both PiC and then JB became very ill.
Most of Sunday was set to extreme hard mode. PiC had fever and chills with an upset GI, JB was throwing up and wiped out, Sera hadn’t managed to eat anything in two days. Smol Acrobat still wasn’t well but their energy level was back up to a nine out of ten. I was up at 5 am changing out sheets and doing laundry, calling the nurse to get a prescription, resettling JB in a new nest of clean bedding. Grabbed a short nap and then was back at it minding Smol Acrobat, picking up prescriptions, cooking food for Sera that she could tolerate, keeping Smol Acrobat out of everyone else’s hair. They missed JB a lot and kept peeking over at the nest every so often. I had to carefully ration my energy, and still crashed by 3 pm after putting Smol down for a late nap. Thankfully, they slept, JB slept, and PiC slept. Even Sera settled down to sleep. I managed to get a couple hours of rest before everyone was awake again. For the first time ever, I told JB they could watch TV however long they wanted because we just needed to survive. I managed to steal a few minutes to finish an email draft from Dec 23 to a dear dear friend S about shared health issues, updating her briefly on our status and the reason I wasn’t sending one of our usual long emails just yet. I promised her a new batch of pictures of the kids soon.
Which brought me to today. Everyone seemed to be improving a little bit. PiC was able to get up and walk Sera and play with Smol Acrobat. I was able to catch up on a few things and as I wandered back down the hall to get Smol to put them down for a nap, I saw an email from dear dear friend’s daughter. We have never spoken before, but I knew her name, and when I saw the subject line my brain glitched. I skimmed the brief email, sat down in the hallway and sobbed and sobbed. My dear dear friend of 20 years had a stroke and died three days ago. I am devastated. I’m still crying. She was so loved, even though we only ever saw each other in person once, in all our long friendship, and we cherished each other. She was my biggest cheerleader when I doubted myself, she gave me so much encouragement with the kids when I was sad or scared or worried. She could reassure me in the most loving ways and make me laugh. She could take a look at one of the kid’s pictures and see their entire personalities and tell me all about it – a rarity in my experience. Most people just see the superficial. She saw their souls, and she was accurate, too. She supported my Lakota project, shared it with friends and family, and I could FEEL her beaming with pride at me whenever we talked about it. Emailing with her was like getting a great big hug. I don’t know what to make of a world without my dear dear friend in it.
I’ve cried rivers trying to write a proper remembrance worthy of her for her family. (more…)
January 15, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 286: The first Monday back after winter break, whew. PAINFUL.
Someday Smol Acrobat will start sleeping through the night, every night. Or most nights. Someday!
The icy wind is really getting to me this week. My bones are extra grateful for the heating pad when winter gives us this extra kick of cold. It also makes me curious about electric blankets and how they work.
Year 4, Day 287: The good news: My new chair arrived! PiC put it together! It’s so much better than my old chair!
The bad news: there’s some weird stuff going at work that I can’t get into or pry into because it’s above my paygrade but my Spidey senses are tingling. They’re probably right and if they are, I hate this.
I goofed on the size of one nibling’s gift this year. The sizing at Old Navy ran much smaller than I expected so I put in a make up order today. I threw in a few shirts for JB and a couple pairs of jeans for myself in a possibly futile attempt to get one more good pair that are NOT skinny jeans. Before you know it, I’ve spent $80. SMH. While I’m decluttering, too! Tsk. But the goal is one of those jeans will fit. If so, I’ll return the other pair, and then I can donate the skinny jeans I can’t bring myself to wear anymore. If not, I’ll return both pairs and give up for the year.
Year 4, Day 288: I thought I was starting most days at 0% charge but I have to recalibrate my scale. I’m probably starting most days at 10% and this morning was 2%. I worked until 11pm, then was up until 2 am because Smol Acrobat needed soothing, then got less than five hours of sleep before startling awake. It feels like sandbags were attached to all my limbs. Sigh. Grateful for my nice comfy new chair. That helps a little.
We’re having some work done on the house. We suspect that all unexpected noise unsettled Sera so much that she threw up. Unfortunately we didn’t discover that until this morning so that was a half an hour of scrubbing out the rug. Sigh.
At least she otherwise seems generally ok, if still a bit slow and less interested in food than normal.
Year 4, Day 289: On the one hand, I’m grateful we’re still getting notifications from the daycare. On the other SIGH for still needing to get notifications. Someone in Smol Acrobat’s classroom was diagnosed with COVID and they were exposed this week. Their privacy restrictions mean we don’t know whether it was a teacher or a student or have any way of really assessing how much exposure there was. No one has spoken up on the parents group chat, though, and they tend to be proactive about informing the other parents when it’s their kid that’s sick so our semi-educated guess is that it was an adult (teacher or aide).
Then we got a notification of a recall on Smol Acrobat’s helmet. Great! Sigh.
Year 4, Day 290: It turns out that Sera is a silent vomiter. I used to always wake up to the sound of a dog horking but she threw up her dinner twice last night and I heard nothing. Then Smol Acrobat was holding their stomach and doubling over crying that their tummy hurt. We didn’t know what to do for it since we didn’t know if it was just a gassy tummy or what. But they resolved those doubts after I dropped off a headachy-but-otherwise-fine-and-masked JB at school by throwing up on me. And then on PiC. They asked for a fruit pouch after their stomach stopped hurting but couldn’t keep that down either. So we had to throw out our two old gel mats in the kitchen. They’re about 12 years old, have wide swaths of cracks across them and I’m not trying to clean vomit out of that.
So basically the entire morning was trading off holding Smol Acrobat and cleaning up vomit after they vomited on each of us. Why are they both (Sera 🐶 and Smol Acrobat) silent vomiters?? Thank goodness we were able to grab a video appointment with a pediatrician who immediately prescribed an anti-nausea medication because apparently stomach flu is going around big time along with all the other awful germs.
Then I had to get Sera to see the vet while PiC handled school pickup with a lump of Smol Acrobat.
Unfortunately the news for Sera isn’t nearly so straightforward. Initial diagnostics point to liver problems. We don’t know how bad it is yet or even what it is yet, but liver problems are never easy to treat. We’re running tests to narrow the field from “maybe cancer, maybe systemic” to one or the other. A few months ago, a new cancer screening blood test came out, we might want to do that. The vet advised me to have a conversation with PiC about exactly how much we want to do. That’s the warning they give when it’s unlikely to have either a cure or a straightforward treatment plan with high success rate. I already know PiC will support whatever path I choose, and we both put their quality of life first. I just … *deep breaths* really hope that we can keep her comfortable long term. I’m not ready to contemplate losing another furry family member. We were finally in a good place after so many years of working with her on her reactivity.
I have just enough presence of mind to be grateful that Smol Acrobat’s vomiting didn’t start in the middle of the night like Sera’s did. It was all in all a terrible day but at least we got some sleep before it went to hell in a handbasket. Everyone is on anti-emetics for the night. Cross your fingers?
January 8, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 279: JB’s developed a hacking cough this weekend that’s sounding worse each night. We already did an at-home COVID test but I’ve scheduled a PCR (hopefully a combo with the flu and RSV test as well) for them later this week. They don’t have any other symptoms right now, but PiC is starting to feel a bit of something after being untouched by the last six rounds of viral infections that Smol Acrobat brought home so I’m concerned all around. I’m staying on my antiviral meds as long as I must to fend off the germs. I simply cannot afford to be any more tired than I already am.
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The blackberry leaves are turning a beautiful purple now. Yay, it’s still alive! I worry about the plants a lot.
Year 4, Day 280: The rain over the past two weeks supercharged my latest round of potato plants. The first container should have a mess of potatoes to harvest. The second container had two-inch sprouts two weeks ago. After three or four soaking rains came through, those two inchers are a foot tall! This shouldn’t surprise me, this is also how fast our weeds grow, but it’s still cool. Not the weeds, those are nothing but annoying.
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I’ve been bumbling around for weeks muttering to myself about needing new travel sized containers for our toiletries. I’ve bought two sets of silicone squeeze bottles over the past ten years and they now both leak. Thankfully I’ve always kept them in plastic bags before adding them to the toiletries bag but the leaks are exasperating. I asked friends for recommendations but nothing really appealed to me. It suddenly hit me that the pile of tiny Palmolive bottles that we keep picking up from Residence Inns over the years – those are 3 oz bottles. I had repurposed one for Smol Acrobat’s body wash, but for some reason it never occurred to me to use them for anything else. We have 8 more of them! This ticks all my boxes: not buying new and repurposing something keeps some plastic out of landfill. I’m eager to test my theory. I’m pretty sure it’ll work fine for the shampoo but I’m less sure about the conditioner which is thicker. (The 3-ounce detail only matters in theory since we’re not planning to fly anytime soon, but I prefer a solution that can be used for all our travels.)
Year 4, Day 281: We’ve moved Smol Acrobat out of their crib and into a big bed. We haven’t done anything with the crib yet so all that means is they started the night in the bed instead of going to bed in the crib, waking up 2-4 hours later screaming until we carry them off to a Big Bed. For their first night, they stayed asleep ALL NIGHT. Will this be replicated again? Only time will tell. Fingers are very crossed.
I am feeling a weird pang about the idea of selling the crib. It cost us a pretty penny years ago and is taking up valuable space.
It’d be good to move it out if we’re done with it. I’m 1000% done with having babies so we have no further use for it if Smol really is moved out. But also, FEELINGS.
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Chatting with an aunty, I found out that it costs $200K/year to care for Granny around the clock as she’s in her 90s and bedridden. Gramps saved and invested really well because they can afford it, but that figure set me back on my heels. How do you plan for that? How do you save enough in case you happen to live past the age where you can care for yourself for very long?
Year 4, Day 282: I jinxed it! Well, maybe it wasn’t me. But Smol did NOT do well last night. So the move to the big bed wasn’t the cure-all, alas. It could be that they’re coming down with something, they often sleep badly (more than usual) when they’re not feeling well and JB’s cough hasn’t been good for anyone. JB tested negative for COVID, RSV and flu, at least.
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I’m very proud of myself for figuring out how to set up this custom listing for JB’s art shop.
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Another aunty chat was several kinds of stress and grief. She has been dealing with my estranged dad and brother through my estrangement. She still has some kind of a relationship with them, and she was filling me in on their latest even though I hadn’t specifically asked. It wasn’t meant in a guilt trip or a mean way. She wanted me to know they were about as ok as they were going to get and insists that I must carry on with my own life, separately, and find my health and happiness. But even though I have no desire to have them back in my life, I still struggle with the grief and frustration related to them. I know it’s so much better for me to be no-contact with them. I also know that my aunty is stepping into the breach to try to get my brother to do the things he needs to do for his housing benefits, and it’s costing her time (and money that she can ill afford). It’s her choice but I was the only person that could get him to do anything, on my say-so. I wasn’t omnipotent, but I could make him do some necessary things. And now I’m gone and she has to resort to bribery to get him to make his appointments. She’s never made much money and now she’s wasting on my brother because I’m not there to do it. Intellectually I know I’m not wrong but I don’t feel right, either. It all makes me very sad. If he wasn’t mentally ill, if he was just the same sociopathic narcissist that my estranged dad is, I’d be so mad at him. But he’s not, and I’m now very sad for the loss of the sibling relationship that we might have had someday.
Year 4, Day 283: We are discovering the lack of good bike racks around the city as PiC is running more errands on the bike when he can. The renovated park has the best one, the Safeway has the worst ones.
I’m working a theory that Sera 🐶 has been off her food lately because she’s overheated in her dog sweaters. I’m testing it today. She’s been taking no more than a few bites of food at a time and last night was the worst yet, she didn’t eat anything but fish topping and left everything else. She was willing to eat if I scooped it in my hand but that’s not sustainable. This morning’s trial run seemed promising, she didn’t eat her whole breakfast at once but she did return and finish most of it by mid-afternoon.
Target has their BOGO 50% off (so, 25% off each when you buy two) vitamins and supplements.
I spent way too long doing the math on whether I should buy the 100 mg coq10 (I can still hear the infomercials in my head for this and it’s not great) or the 200 mg bottle and also decided I should try increasing my dose to 300 mg / day to see if that helps the fatigue more than 200 mg / day.
$25 – 100 mg 120 count
$12.50 – 100 mg 120 count
16¢ / each
300 mg (3*100 / 3*0.16) = .48/day
240/3= 80 days
$29 – 200 mg 40 cap
$14.50- 200 mg 40 cap
54¢ / each
300 mg (200+100 mg / .54+.16) = 0.70/day.
The differences are clearly negligible but my brain needed that little bit of exercise.