September 25, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 178: It’s “I feel like a SLUG” Monday. The weekend was too long and too much, and didn’t end until about 2 this morning because of painsomnia, but it’s over and I’m putting it behind me. A shame that I can’t put the PEM behind me just as expeditiously.
I managed huge piles of work and my expectations. The remaining giant piles can wait until tomorrow and it will be ok. It is not a judgement on my prowess that some days I can’t do the work of four people. I also gave myself extra time to go pick up JB so I could sloth as slowly as I needed without worrying about running late. Before giving up for the day, I picked a second Lakota family to shop for before September is over.
Something set off my bag lady syndrome. I’m balancing a flare up of my occasional “must hoard resources!” instinct alongside my usual must-help-folks-personally motto. Might be partly because we’ve given a lot more than usual in a single week to folks who needed cash, might be something else triggered my old insecurities. I often worry we don’t help people enough and then have to remind myself it’s ok to live our own lives too, we don’t have to give until it hurts every time all the time. We still have a responsibility to look out for our futures and the kids, as much as we do to give back to the community.
Smol Acrobat was a giant pill at dinner but cooperative during bath time. It doesn’t quite even out but that’s better than the usual terrible at dinner, terrible at bath, and terrible at sleep trifecta.
Year 4, Day 179: Another slow and late morning. We’re still recovering from the weekend, I’ll probably be sluggy all week. My eyes were irritated the whole morning, I assumed it was because my eyeglass prescription is out of date, but it may actually be because the wildfire smoke had been blowing in. I didn’t notice the smell until mid afternoon, when it had become cloying and gross. On that theme, I missed an important detail in a text which led to some complications in the kid pickup routine. Then the dinner place we were going to try was closed today. Also irritating! (more…)
September 18, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 171: I am made of anxiety and overwhelm today. I have staffing issues at work. Not bad issues, but issues that required a great deal of my attention last week and need more this week for it to work out right. I also have our meeting with the principal who has my hackles up so high, I can’t stand the thought of being in the same room.
I was honest about my feelings and did my best to breathe through them. That helped a bit. But it was frustrating that every time I noticed the anxiety symptoms had ebbed, noticing them brought them back.
Year 4, Day 172: Terrible sleep after staying up late to clear the decks before this morning full of meetings. But I am still glad I stayed up, that advance work let me get through all the meetings and the scheduling of more meetings and the regular work today without an anvil weight on my chest.
Quite annoyed that because of the many distractions caused by the school failing to do what they should have done without our prompting, I missed sending out a package on time to our Lakota sponsee. I had spent two months putting it together ahead of time, so I can schedule it to go out later this week once I have a moment. Just very annoyed at how impossible it is to handle all the things, all the time.
We got another “whose child is this?” report from daycare. Smol Acrobat turns into a whiny blubbery mess at the drop of a hat, mornings, evenings, and weekends at home. They go from happpyyyyyy to CRYFACE in nanoseconds. But their teacher at daycare commented one morning, after PiC exasperatedly observed that it was yet another hellish morning getting them out the door: that’s weird, they never cry here.
WHAT.
I briefly forgot but pretty sure this was the same for JB, too. I think they were a triple handful at home and mostly just fine at school. I remember many instances where I had to heft JB like a log and take them to their room for a time out, and conversations with a former teacher friend whose kids were the same age who reassured me that the kids who are terrors at home are frequently totally fine at school.
Year 4, Day 173: The meeting happened today, finally. The anticipation was getting to me. While it changed very little, we got a bit of new information that we didn’t have before. Their former teacher covered most of what we needed, the principal confirmed that they wouldn’t allow this to drag on if it keeps up this year. She mentioned checking in with the kid multiple times to make sure they were staying away from JB. So that’s the last piece we needed: to see the school taking some accountability and not ignoring the whole thing as a NBD.
Year 4, Day 174: Sera š¶ and I both had a rough night. Not sure if her restlessness was due to arthritis pain or being unable to settle until PiC stopped working but she paced the halls at half hour intervals until 2 am. I had painsomnia and when I did finally drop off, my sleep was fragmented and light. Could someone bottle sleep and sell it, please?
On the bright side: it’s been two whole weeks since my last sore throat!?
Year 4, Day 175: Friday food! Go figure, the meal I liked the least was the meal that Smol Acrobat actually ate on their own: Costco rotisserie chicken wrapped in cheesy tortillas with (and without the second time) Mexican rice. I’m positive the selling point was the tub of sour cream they were allowed to dip into. They were given one wrap and they ate it entirely on their own without needing me to coax them one mouthful at a time! š We also had bulgogi from the Costco fridge section with rice and salad one night. The bulgogi is great on top of a salad without rice too if you’re cutting back on starches. We had each of those meals twice, on alternating days.
September 11, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 164: I only labored a little this Labor Day, and that was just to marginally make up for some time I’ll need to be away from my desk tomorrow.
I have had it up to here with cajoling Smol Acrobat to eat their dinner night after night after endless frustrating hair-rending night. I declared that their choice was clear: finish eating their meal, and join the rest of us in a bowl of ice cream, or don’t, and don’t.
PiC wasn’t sure I meant it until I sent JB to the freezer to bring out the tub. Yup. I meant business. I started eating my ice cream right in front of them. They’ve never cleared a plate of regular non-dessert food (safely, no worries, they weren’t THAT motivated) so fast on their own.
All I want for my birthday is not to spend another night trying to get this child to eat their dang dinner. You’d think we were trying to poison them the way they avoid eating until we come up with sufficient motivation.
Year 4, Day 165: All three packages arrived today, ahead of schedule: my medication, Sera’s š¶ meds and treats, and my binders. It’s satisfying to get them all squared away on a Tuesday because the boxes can go out with the Wednesday recycling. It’s such a little thing to be happy about.
Year 4, Day 166: Roller coaster day. This morning, I contacted the superintendent’s office since the principal never bothered to acknowledge our email, much less engage in meaningful conversation.
The assistant confirmed receipt quickly, then it was just as quickly passed over to the Director of Student Safety, who dumped it back in the lap of the principal for an in-person meeting. You know, the one who ignored the email to begin with.
I shouldn’t be surprised, just like I wasn’t surprised that she refused to offer any constructive feedback on the situation in the first place, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. It felt like it was my failure to be effective. I did my best to lay out the situation as we saw it and open a dialogue. Instead, we get passed around like a hot potato that no one wants to deal with. And somehow it feels like MY failure. PiC says that it’s good that it’s now all documented. I suppose that’s looking at the marginally less dark side of things. We wouldn’t even BE here if they had bothered to respond to my email like they should have done in the first place. Or if they gave two hoots about student safety. They keep acting like we’re trying to punish the other kid. We have no interest in the other kid. We only want to stop the behavior before it gets completely out of hand.
Year 4, Day 167: I keep wondering why I’m so behind this week and then I open this post and realize oh, that’s right. We had one day off and though I cleared my desk on Friday, I’m still burning the midnight oil trying to get caught up and not making enough of a dent. So that’s depressing. But! The good news on the work side is we will be able to train more staff soon, ahead of need for once, because I had a brilliant plan and now all it needs is a brilliant execution to make sure that my team has good backup. So there is that.
On the personal side, I’ve been having all kinds of awful feelings of failure about the bully situation. While mulling over all the things I don’t know about this situation, I stopped by JB’s former teacher’s classroom to ask for her thoughts. She was very forthcoming about the things I asked, and then asked to speak to JB for a bit. She very kindly reassured JB that they have every right to defend themselves if this kid comes at them again, and that they wouldn’t be in trouble for that. I don’t know how they didn’t inherit my “touch me and I’ll pop you” gene but they’re more worried about getting in trouble than they are about protecting themselves. That accounts for at least half my feelings of failure. The other half is probably emotional backlash from seeing responsible adults at the school abdicate their responsibilities to keep JB safe. I didn’t spot that one, genius Jaydot did.
A line from Suits that stuck with me: “for all his faults, he would take a bullet before he would let anything happen to his little girl.” A whole lot of us are in the (We have/had a) Crappy Parent Club. Suffice to say my dad wouldn’t take a bent nail for me and I didn’t know how deeply that would undermine how I parent and how I feel about parenting.
Year 4, Day 168: Friday food review! I threw together a baked salmon, rice, and (frozen) broccoli dinner one night. I picked up a Thai feast the other night. PiC added my fresh dug potatoes from the garden (er, the potato growing bag), to a premade chicken curry from Costco one night. That’s the one dish that was popular with Smol Acrobat. Just enough for them to ask for some more than once but not eat all of it all the time. I can’t wait until they outgrow this distracted eating phase.
It’s felt like pulling teeth to get food on the table this week. I think I’m overwhelmed from juggling all the things.
September 4, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 157: My money nerd self soothing involves looking at our dividend income and figuring out how much of our bills we can pay with it. Right now the monthly average is about $300 so. That covers the water/sewer every other month, and the electric/gas bill, and 1/12 of the property tax. That’s not going so far.
I bought Costco stock in 2013 when it was around $120/share and that was expensive for my cash flow. If you’d told me back then that it would be quadruple in price in ten years, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I might have scraped together the cash to buy ten or twenty more shares just in case. I wish I had. The next time I bought was in 2021 at $360/share and I would have sworn that was the peak. It’s around $530 now so I clearly know nothing. Of course my incredulity that it’s $530 feels the same as I felt when it was $120/share and $360/share.
Year 4, Day 158: I’ve enjoyed having our potato growing sacks so much, especially because they don’t really need much tending day to day, that I’ve been strongly tempted to venture into berries. Blueberries and/or blackberries. Our friends a few miles away who actually get sun have fantastically producing bushes and as I type this I realize that sun could be the reason they have such a great garden. Am I going to be wasting our money on bushes? I recall reading that you need two buy two bushes for cross pollination of the blueberries, I wonder if that’s the same for blackberries. We’ll also need to put netting over them. Our friends didn’t in their first year and lost almost their entire harvest to the birds.
Year 4, Day 159: I am unsurprised to see that on Day 3 post-email, the principal still hasn’t acknowledged receipt or responded in any way. I’m giving myself the week to catch up on rest and work and then next week, when she still won’t have responded, I’ll wade back into this and escalate.
This is my week of sleeplessness. One night it’s because the pain just won’t fade enough for me to sleep. The next night it’s Smol Acrobat waking up multiple times crying and needing soothing back to sleep. The next, insomnia again. Maybe this is my body’s way of saying “you only think you’re relaxing!”
Year 4, Day 160: A month ago we surprised ourselves by buying the new car that came available rather unexpectedly. The expected result was that we needed to downsize by selling our now-extraneous third car. It makes sense. There’s no room in the garage for three cars. There’s barely room in there for two. The decluttering part of me wanted it gone the week after the new car came home but we’ve been really busy so I’ve just maneuvered as best I could and he cleared as much detritus that built up in the garage as he could. We coped. PiC finally found time last weekend to prepare the ad and now he’s getting replies. My I can’t wait to have that space cleared impatience was replaced with sadness the second the ad replies started to come in.
That was the car we brought Sera and Smol Acrobat home in. That was the car we took the whole family, including Seamus and Sera, on trips in. And that was the car we took Seamus for his last ride in.
Finally letting go of it feels really sad. But as a reminder, I can’t trust the trunk lid to stay up properly which is really irritating so I’ll try to balance the nostalgia with the stuff I won’t miss.
Year 4, Day 161: This makes six days this week I’ve not gotten four hours of sleep any night. I’m too tired to exist.
Friday food review! We had a Trader Joe’s frozen meals medley one night. Thank goodness the food is decent quality or that meal would have been really sad. We tried Jollibee for the first time. JB loved the burgersteak and Smol Acrobat loved the fried chicken, that was the opposite result from what I expected. JB loved the peach mango pie as expected and Smol didn’t like it, less of a surprise. Adults were fine with all of it. We had two leftovers nights and one sushi (big treat!) night. Feeding one kid who mostly loves everything (and therefore wants my sashimi) and one kid who dislikes mostly everything (and therefore only picks at every possible option) is becoming extra annoying when I have to spend special treat nights trying to find one thing Smol Acrobat can eat enough of to qualify as a sufficient calorie meal.
I know I said I’d give myself a week to rest before wading back into the fight but Monday is a holiday which means I felt like I needed to get a jump on drafting my email to the superintendent.
I understand why I felt that way but it was a terrible decision.
That was an awful way to close out the week, of course, leaving me irritable and angsty about the upcoming confrontation.
August 28, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 150: I was in a funk waking up this morning in so much pain. Nightmares all night meant my jaws ached from clenching. A new viral thing got hold of me this weekend and started up fresh mouth sores instead of throat sores, so that’s worse. My joints are extra cranky, probably from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary passing over. Tendons and ligaments were down for the count as well.
Sigh. I’d already emailed my ENT and set up a follow up with my primary so I just needed to try and get through it.
Our nice elderly neighbor (of gift card confusion) was badly injured in a fall a week ago and her husband gave me her phone number and address where she’s being treated so I could check on her. We ordered her some treats as well. She’s keeping a positive striving spirit about it but I know she’s in a lot of pain.
Year 4, Day 151: The orthodontist office manager really ticked me off. By email, they agreed to honor the old quote from last year, but not the discount that was included. Of course, they didn’t say the latter part until we had been in the office for almost two hours getting ready to pay for the treatment plan. I politely but irkedly pointed out that our delay to the treatment start was only because their prior office manager who was promoted had ghosted me for several months. A brief but pointed silence after she apologized for that followed, and then I nodded that she could proceed with charging my card while wearing my “I’m definitely not happy with this” face which doesn’t translate VERY well under a flo-mask but translated well enough that she interrupted herself to offer me a halfway decent compensatory $75 gift card from a promotion they were running for new patients. I was perfectly aware that they had a $200 gift card promotion but the $75 made up the difference, so I didn’t bother to push harder.
I am second guessing my decision not to wait another year to start this treatment for JB. We would have needed to choose the better dental plan at the 2022 open enrollment, but we didn’t know we needed ortho coverage until after open enrollment. We’d have to choose the higher priced plan this fall, and then we’d be able to use it January 2024.
– JB may well need to have another round of treatment when all their teeth are in. This treatment is only intended to help their jaw grow in a way that corrects an overbite and makes space for the incoming teeth which are already too crowded. We can only try to set them up for success and give their incoming teeth a chance to come in straight.
– Insurance will only pay $2000 one time for any orthodontic treatment.
– This is the biggest thing, though. There’s also a very limited window of time when the soft palate is just cartilage and this can be done. About 2 years? Roughly? Their dentist said last fall that she’d recommend getting this done ASAP though we had a couple years to do it.
If we wait until Jan 2024, will that window be closed? We don’t know but I don’t really want to risk making the treatment harder on them than it has to be or even missing the boat entirely. Remember, the recommendation was made in November 2022.
I’d mentally classified this as saving that coverage for later but that felt like lying to myself. It’s better to save the money earlier than later. I think I’m more at peace with acknowledging that we are choosing to spend the money outright now because it’s the better medical choice, and that it’s ok if we don’t use the ortho coverage later.
Year 4, Day 152: Having dodged the bullet with JB’s microaggression bully from last year, we were surprised that the kid who was hitting and kicking them last year came back for a third round of attack.
I don’t know why I was surprised, I guess I had the wild notion he’d learned his lesson. But since he hadn’t, we initiated another conversation with the principal and teacher to ask for next steps. The daycare would not have tolerated a third incident but I’m getting the sense that public schools do the absolute least possible when it comes to bullying.
Canvassing my friends across the nation confirmed this sense. It seems that schools won’t do anything to intervene unless they’re absolutely forced to.
The principal’s meeting with the kids and email back to us was so woefully inadequate I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I ran it past two public school teachers to confirm that I wasn’t overreacting, and they confirmed it was boilerplate cover your ass text and that I should push back. It took me a day and a half to compose myself enough to start formulating the reply.
I’m still not done editing.
In summary, this week feels like garbage, let’s compost it for something better.
I have the sneaking suspicion that I feel this way specifically because I loathe dealing with interpersonal issues. And also someone keeps being aggressive at my kid and won’t stop and the adults won’t do anything to stop it either.
Year 4, Day 153: Right when I least needed it, because I need to get that letter to the school done today, the brain fog moved in. If I really needed an answer to the debate of physical pain vs mental impairment, who loses? It’s definitely me but also mental impairment. I hate being in pain from top to toe but at least I can mostly think even when everything hurts.
I consoled myself with the thought that their barely sufficient action has ruined my week. 27 drafts in, because this other student is the offspring of a teacher at this school and I have to worry about reprisals against my kids from teachers for holding the administration accountable for protecting my kid against a bully (who fully admits to the bullying, by the way! Clearly he feels he has nothing to fear at this school!) I have such a headache.
My brain hurts. My face hurts. My rage continues to steam out my ears.
A polite but pointed “we’re not done, actually, until you take more than the bare minimum slap on the wrist action” email should land in their inbox on Friday morning so as to ruin her Friday. I’m feeling petty and I’m not ashamed of it given how little consideration she’s paid to my kid being hurt at school.
Year 4, Day 154: Friday food review! Actually. Nothing particularly exciting this week. I pulled out frozen chili for dinner one night and whipped up an experimental GF cornbread because we had no flour on hand. Now we have no cornmeal either. (Add to grocery list, note to self). The texture was wonderful but the butter didn’t come through well and the kids didn’t like it much. I’m guessing it’s because it didn’t have a lick of sweetness. Maybe I’ll try making it again and add honey next time. We had leftover takeout from a local Chinese place one night and … Huh. I can’t remember any other dinners. Oh, right, a frozen Costco lasagna one night and then rice, salmon, and broccoli one night. Very basic stuff!
August 21, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 143: Woof, it’s hard to tell but it’s possible that 15ish minutes of weeding for two consecutive weekends mornings utterly wrecked me. All my major joints so angry and swollen they’re radiating heat, and all my muscles are also angry. My body is more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than is healthy for a human. I wanted to wallow in bed all day. Couldn’t, of course. Monday being Monday, I had kids to get out the door, a hundred emails and a stack of reports to get through. Normally I’d pace myself more but I’m taking a day off to ferry everyone to appointments later this week and would rather clear the desk enough to ignore work on my ferrying day.
Year 4, Day 144: We didn’t make it a week before a report of a COVID case on campus cropped up. I’m not surprised. But more people are more surprised by the fact that we’re even getting reporting. Naturally, we then were notified that our district won’t be reporting cases anymore. What a sad state of affairs this is.
~~~~~
Good news bad news on my health front.
I hate meeting new doctors. I never know if they’re going to take me seriously and I hate having to make them take me seriously. So meeting a new doctor this week about my chronic sore throat problem strained my nerves until we started chatting and I realized this guy is at least 5 years younger than me. He reminds me of my younger cousin! That let me relax a smidge. Then the fact that he listened carefully to everything I had to say was reassuring. He took a look and spotted the issue in my throat, and gave me a rundown on treatment options along with his opinion on each. That brings me to the bad news part. He thinks this is my body overreacting to viral infections that I’m picking up from Smol Acrobat. Every. Single. Month. So it overreacts by producing a truckload of sores in the nose and throat while it’s trying to fight the infection and then … Sigh. Chronic severe sore throat.
Year 4, Day 145: I frequently feel like a bad or inadequate parent. A combination of never feeling good enough to want to play with my kids and feeling like I should want to.
I try my hardest not to consciously compare myself to other parents as much as possible but it’s hard not to feel it crop up now and again. Today, I had two small moments of good: Smol Acrobat asked me to build rock towers for them and they were pleased enough with my builds to give me cheesy grins for pictures. JB wanted to play catch but PiC wasn’t in the mood so I took them for 15 minutes of 2-square. (Not enough people for 4-square.) PiC would usually indulge every request, regardless of his own feelings, but it was better that I did it. Even if my knees feel swollen to the size of soccer balls (they aren’t, it’s just the feeling of inflammation), it actually felt better to me to play than not today. And on an extremely bad body day, at that. I’m kind of proud of myself.
Year 4, Day 146: Crossing my fingers that we settle into a manageable routine next week. I’m still recovering from my day of nearly back to back appointments for the family. Dentist, daycare dropoff, errand, doctor, short break, dentist again for almost two hours.
Back to School night is tonight and I couldn’t scrape together even an ounce of energy to go. PiC took the hit (and JB) while I prepped Smol Acrobat for bed. I’m not sure how I feel about the expectations for third grade but as usual, we’ll roll with it. Fundraising starts on Friday, that’s what we get in lieu of school supply shopping lists.
Year 4, Day 147: Food talk Friday! Just made that up. Sunday I used up all my egg boiling luck to whip up a batch of egg salad for our lunches this week. Win! We initially planned to do pizza one night to make the week easier but it didn’t work out so we made “fancy” ramen night with Costco tonkotsu bowls, roast pork from the freezer, frozen corn and soft boiled eggs (had insufficient luck left, they were too soft). But still an overall win. We had leftover small potatoes from my pot roast experience and that went into a yellow chicken curry (premade from Costco). Everyone liked that too.
I think this makes two weeks we didn’t wish we had done takeout to save some energy. I’ll want some soon enough, I’m sure.
*****
Housekeeping: You’d think we never washed the rugs around here. The bathroom rug is all fluffed up after I did a load of bathroom rugs and everyone is disproportionately happy about it. Small wins in the sensory department.
August 14, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 136: JB starts school this week which is both good and bad for me. They’ll finally be out of the house for a large chunk of hours during the work day, yay!! We actually have to be up and out the door by 8 am, siiiiiiigh. I’m not looking forward to that bit.
Mixed bag on the health front. My throat has been sore for 8 days, along with mysterious mouth pain that made me wonder “hand foot mouth??? nooooooo!” It’s not COVID after three at home tests, nor anything the family is susceptible to since I’m the only miserable one. HMF is generally very contagious so I am hopeful it’s not stealth HMF. I have no idea what it is but it stinks. I chatted with my doctor who’s putting me on 2 months of antacids to see if that improves anything before referring me to ENT.
On the other hand, I took Sera for a much longer afternoon walk than we usually take and I wasn’t gasping for breath or debating crawling back the last steps. That’s a huge change from the norm!
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