July 25, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 122: 6 am. BLERGH.
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Massively overdid it over the weekend and paying a steep price for it today. Absolutely everything aches and my fingers were swollen sausages all day.
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I’m finding it deeply conflicting having a relationship with the conservatives in my family. Hell, it’s difficult just talking to them without holding them personally responsible for their political views that shore up the horrors of gun violence, the horrors of SCOTUS wiping our rights away, the horrors of violence against LGBTQA people, children and adults. Every time we have a conversation, I’m fighting with myself not to lose my head and start screaming. It’s complicated. It’s not how I want to torch our relationship. I only have so much family that’s cared about me and mine. But I’m not wrong about their politics and how harmful they are, either.
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Another family of my Very Cautious circle are COVID positive/exposed and it’s infuriating all over again that despite all our precautions, it’s gotten more of us. I hate how society and our government have failed us. I hate that we have to rapid test constantly if we want to see people and still can’t feel relaxed about being vaxxed and masked and air purified and outdoors.
Year 3, Day 123: 630 am. PiC is my morning parent saint, he let me get a solid extra hour and that made such a difference in my physical functioning. I still couldn’t make it to 8 pm without intense pain and fatigue but I did have a few decent hours.
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This Kyoto band made me wonder how widespread swing dancing was back in the day. Was it an international thing or primarily the US? I should look that up when I have time. Someday.
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I am facing a hard truth: I am an avaricious bag hoarder and it might be a problem. I love functional totes, crossbody, messenger bags of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes backpacks too. We were at Sports Basement the other day and I found myself examining the Fjallraven bags. I thought they were hip packs at first, and my conscious thought was: maybe that’s better for dog walking than my current little crossbody that gets tangled in my coat sometimes. But my subconscious was just: bag! bag! bag! How do I curb my inner bag monster?
One minor consolation, pondering “maybe I can make one?” gave me a quick jolt to the creative brain area at least.
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Everything IS terrible.
Year 3, Day 124: 6:50 am.
Smol Acrobat is really full of themselves right now. They are running at a higher gear of mischief and “talking” more. They’re forming audible yeses and nos, and mixing up all their baby signs. It feels like a (temporary) net loss in total communication success as they test a shift to more verbal communication.
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I watched a Love it or List it episode, which I usually don’t do because the whole fakery of reality TV is unappealing, and it was actually an interesting one because it addressed accessibility issues. One of the couple is in a wheelchair and they need their current or future home to be more accessible. They kept mentioning “universal design” which I need to look up, but it was striking how many homes are so deeply inaccessible. I see this a lot in the Bay Area as well. What would it be like to have homes designed to be accessible or accessible ready from the start?
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Some days I feel like doing nothing but staring into the void. Surely my expression matches that of these owls.
Year 3, Day 125: 7 am.
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My aunt called me to ask about the kids and then asked me about whether I’d speak to my bio-dad if I saw him. Um. Why would I see him? It was a very weird conversation. I wonder if she knows something is going on or if she was just testing the waters of our relationship. Even that’s a weird reason. It wouldn’t be out of character coming from anyone else but she’s not generally nosy that way. She’s usually pretty respectful of my boundaries and that’s why we stay in touch. It was a very unsettling conversation and I didn’t like it. Not so coincidentally, with that on my mind, naturally when I read this tweet I thought: BIODAD.
Also, I always feel like there’s another shoe waiting to drop, with him (and my brother who lives with him). The first shoe was my cutting him off and some of his halfhearted attempts to manipulate me through other people. The second is, I’m assuming, what happens when he finally gets sick and needs care. For damn sure my brother won’t provide it. So at that point, I’m going to have to deal with something to do with them and not knowing what I’ll be facing bothers me. It’s absolutely not an option to take him/them in. We don’t have the room but even if we did, I refuse to let him/them into my home near my children. They cannot be trusted. I tell myself not to borrow tomorrow’s troubles, it’s just hard not to want to prepare myself for whatever bad stuff will come down the pike.
Year 3, Day 126: 8 am. They are so unpredictable. Earlier in the week they had a late bedtime and were tired, still woke up in the 6 o’clock range. Same conditions last night? Late sleep in. Weird.
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My throat has been hurting all week and I’ve had a persistent dry cough. I’ve tested myself, all of us actually, every day this week and keep concluding it’s not COVID or a cold, because everyone else remains well (thank goodness). This must be my CFS acting up and that may be because I’m staying up entirely too late. This needs to stop. Ouch.
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This is mesmerizing. I wonder what AOL did wrong starting in the year 2000 to lose their foothold as an early tech company with massive loads of users. We used them starting around 1996, roughly, and I can’t remember when we stopped using them for dial up. (Remember that eeee eeee eeee eeee squeal of the modem?)
July 18, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 115: 610 am. We had some sleep progress over the weekend but it’s going in the wrong direction now. 🤞😬
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Monday Morning Musing: why am I such a sucker for Hello Kitty stuff?
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Smol thinks it’s HILARIOUS to pretend to fall off a step. Sure, yuk it up, it’s funny ’til you actually DO fall off.
We had a looooong stretch of time before their nap today. I think we’re on day 5 of shifting them to one nap a day and this was the first day of those that I was solo with them. We did ALL THE THINGS. Backyard time, digging weeds time, trying on water wings, bouncing the basketball, bouncy ball, and soccer ball. Even tried on a baseball glove but they were iffy about that one.
They’ve been “talking” up a storm since the weekend, forming near words and even managed “mum/mom”. They were mostly talking to PiC but today they patted me very hard from chest to head establishing I also get to be mum mum mum mom mom mom. We also suddenly have a more clear “no” (but for nose, not negative) and “yep/yip” for yes. It’s a little disconcerting to have a handful of words when they didn’t have any a few days ago but also a relief. The unfortunate bit that goes with these three words is that they now mostly refuse to sign. Instead they insist that we go through intricate charades to figure out what they want. CHILDREN.
Year 3, Day 116: 4:45 am. BAH HUMBUG. I thought we were starting to make progress after three post 6 am wake ups in a row. That seemed so promising. This was a big step backwards as were the micro catnaps they kept taking in the car when running short errands instead of waiting to get home for a real longer nap. They finally took a whopper of a nap mid afternoon. 🤞 for tonight’s sleep.
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My pain has been out of control the past few days and therefore unbearable at night. At best I can get 3-4 hours out of 8 hours of laying down because it just hurts too much to fall asleep or stay asleep.
I’m need pain relief to sleep but I can only take so much heat and nothing else does much. I just have to wait it out.
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I asked Twitter and now I’m asking you: Is (was) there anything about your job you think is fun?
Year 3, Day 117: So many wake ups. I lost count after five. I was so tired. I am so tired. I’m so tired today that all I want is to curl up and cry for several hours and hibernate for week.
Alas. It is not meant to be. It’s so frustrating that when I’m most tired is when my pain will skyrocket. Can I please take them one at a time please??
Can Smol please start sleeping in a decent routine please please please??
(So far, the answer is no.)
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As the end of our summer nears, JB is increasingly stricken with grief that they’re heading back to school soon. We made a tactical error sending them to a summer camp that was Too Much Fun. They never want the fun to stop and they’ve been trying to negotiate more camp and less school. They even tried to get me to agree to homeschool them. Hah. Hah. Hah. They won’t even do their chores without attitude and whining, there’s no way I, with my absolute lack of any teaching skill or aptitude, would take on that task without a massive life change first. No no and no. I have been tempted in principle because sending my kids to school where they run the risk of being murdered, because it truly can happen anywhere, is one of my many parenting nightmares, but in reality, I think we’d both be scarred for life.
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Such tired. Help.
Year 3, Day 118: 5 am? 6 am? So tired I couldn’t tell but thankfully PiC was able to field them today.
So tired today that my brain continued to spin like a whirligig when I finally laid down in bed. Ouch and ouch.
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Struggling with massive disappointment today. We thought we’d get to see a family member who we’ve been missing deeply next week. After 2+ years of being super careful, we got our hopes up. Then COVID got them. I am still steeped in denial that they will be well enough (aka test negative) in time for a visit but I may need to start making my peace with yet another disappointment and a refresh of my fury over how people not giving a damn about this pandemic has deprived us YET AGAIN of the company of a loved one.
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My brain is the tiger:
Year 3, Day 119: We had a lot going on yesterday and Smol didn’t get to sleep until very very late. I was sure this would lead to a disastrous sleep but they were out cold until 8 am. Yay!
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I’ve been struggling with sewing. After making several zipper pouches in various sizes that I really like, I’ve hit a wall. I suspect my creative engine went on hiatus and writing this is my way of actively making myself be ok with the pause. It’s ok to wait until my brain and body are in sync and ready to take on the learning process for another set of projects.
When I have a longer stretch of time between looming deadlines, I’d like to make a set of packing cubes using the fabrics that I have on hand. I know mesh tops would be useful but I’m inclined to fiddle with (and yell at) mesh yet. I’m thinking of making each of us a large cube with a different cotton fabric top “lid” piece for each person. We are all sharing one packing cube set now and we’re going to outgrow that really soon. I’m studying these two tutorials in hopes that the process will start making more sense before I get started. If you have a good tutorial, I’d love to see it!
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There’s some irony in the fact that I recognized Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to say Goodbye” on Sesame Street from another room because my mom really liked his music. Sending her to his concert was one of the few gifts I was ever able to give her as an adult.
Is it irony? Or is it just a heart twinge?
July 11, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 108: Alas. We had ONE good sleep night, Saturday, and it made Sunday feel 100x better than an average day. It was too much to hope for a second solid sleep like that but 5 wake-ups in the night is too much! Like a dang boomerang.
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Anyway, I didn’t want to jinx us by recording the immediate post-vax reaction but now that we’re 72 hours out, it seems reasonably safe to report the short term: Smol Acrobat seems to be taking Dose 1 very well. They hardly noticed the actual needle, which is unusual, and they didn’t seem to have any side effects. No fever, fatigue, aches. Side effects to Moderna are expected to last a couple days so I think we’re through the woods on that part.
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Gas is currently $6.06/gal. Just stating that for posterity’s sake.
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We’re not celebrating this national holiday. We’re very tired humans. And we’re humans who are very tired of this country being a place that is controlled by the Christian right and tells most of us we’re second class or lower, that we don’t deserve to live happy healthy lives unless it’s within specifically drawn out lines of “acceptability” and says that it’s ok that children are slaughtered in schools as long as they can have their guns. This is not and has never been a great place. It could be so much better. But will it?
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July 4, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 101: 530 am wake up. Our sleep experiment has been a shambles since we’ve all (except PiC) caught JB’s virus (not COVID). We couldn’t, in good conscience, cut short Smol’s daytime naps when they are trying to recover from this bug. And really, I’m just barely holding on myself. I need those longer breaks.
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I’m surprised I hadn’t mentioned some of these things but in hindsight I shouldn’t be. Last week was full of managing sick children, PiC’s work overload (lots of people are going off on vacation in his department so he’s covering double digit projects), the soul punch that was SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade. I got sick too, so I could barely think. This week’s post will catch up on the big important things.
I spent every day since June 15th stalking the sites for Smol’s vax. The earliest I could get a slot was for last Friday which we had to reschedule to this week because they were feverish on the day. The first replacement appointment we could get was a week out. Deepest of sighs. I had to get my booster when I was sick and it was absolutely terrible so we don’t want to put Smol through the same wringer.
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June 27, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 94: 12 am, 2 am, 430 am, 445 am 515 am wake ups. I’m at my wit’s end today. Yes, it was a terrible night of sleep (half was my body being what it is and half was Smol) but it’s now what, three months of trying to ride this out?
This weekend I couldn’t take it anymore and spent some time researching a dozen articles on how to deal with borked sleep and there are so many many reasons it could be and half of them contradict the other hald. Bedtime too early, bedtime too late, too much napping, too little napping, low sleep need, more sleep need.
Today specifically, I’m frazzled between needing to work and needing to fix Smol’s sleep schedule because we cannot keep going like this. Diagnosing what’s causing them their early waking has me pulling my hair out though. They might average 3-4 hours of naps at day and only sleep 10 hours at night. They’re consistently getting up way too early every morning, bright and early and happy about it, but clearly they are still tired to be napping as much as they do. My working theory is to push them to take shorter day naps and hope that means longer night sleep. We’re testing this theory today but that also means I have very very very limited time to work. At best, two hours of nap time to work.
Naturally that means my computer was a steaming pile of rotten turnips. After an hour of troubleshooting and restarting (SEVEN TIMES), the file explorer finally started working only for another thing to break. I was on the verge of screaming. Thankfully, I managed not to blow my top and moved on to other things for a short while.
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JB complained of a sore throat at 9 pm, and since I’ve had one myself for the past four days which I chalked up to CFS, we went and took a precautionary test. Negative, thankfully, so sent them to bed with a dose of ibuprofen for the pain.
Year 3, Day 95: 515 am. Experiment has not yet borne fruit. I know, it was unlikely to change overnight but I hoped. Silly, I know. If it seems like I snapped overnight, it feels like I did! It was over the weekend. Suddenly I just couldn’t take this seemingly endless early morning waking anymore. I had thought surely it’d go back to a more reasonable time by now! (more…)
June 20, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 87: 530 am.
Cycling through pain, fatigue, brain fog, brain fog, fatigue, and pain in quick succession for the ten days has given me the chance to more closely judge which is the worst. For reference, being tired is being out of breath for a few minutes. Being fatigued feels like 50 lb weights attached to every limb and another 100 lbs of sandbags on my shoulders. Pain is like getting speared in every limb and/or joint, repeatedly, with a few twists thrown in for good measure. Brain fog is like a cotton stuffed head that you can’t think through or around.
In order, worst to least worst: Fatigue, brain fog, pain.
At least with pain, as crappy as that is, I can still make myself do things. It doesn’t often make the pain worse long term, just short term as I strain whatever’s being forced to work. I can’t do that with brain fog or fatigue. Powering though definitely makes the fatigue exponentially worse. So that answers an idle question I’ve had for years.
Caveat: this is applicable to mild to moderate pain only, and generally it’s rare for me to have only one symptom. Today it’s moderate pain so I can physically push through but with a side of brain fog so planning anything is futile. I am a lot of fun.
Now where do I please sign up for D: none of the above.
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I’ve been deeply unsettled over the likelihood of having a run in with my biodad at a family event scheduled for later this year. For the past five years, we’ve enjoyed family holidays to which he was not invited, by my request, but his invitation is not revocable for this particular thing. I understand that part. They’ve supported me well during this period but this is on the level of a family reunion, so even as much as I’d like to be sure we won’t see him, I can’t be. We’ve discussed this with JB and I’ve discussed with my therapist a lot. I’m still mad at him. I’m still bitter about all the shit he pulled, all the lies he told, all the money he stole, and the bonus attempts at manipulation after he was cut off. I’m not ready to forgive and I’m never going to forget who he really was. Now, we are approaching this event with the aim of personal safety (masked, outdoors, vaxxed guests only) and personal comfort. We’ll go for as long as we can with the kids and their needs, I figure at best we’ll be there for two hours. If he does attend, I have no intention of engaging. My preference would be for us to ignore each other completely. I certainly have no intention of introducing him to Smol Acrobat. I don’t know that he knows about them but he’s most definitely not holding my kid. Smol Acrobat wouldn’t want to be held by a stranger anyway. (more…)
June 13, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 80: 1045 pm, 330 am, 530 am wake ups. 😒 On the one hand, toddler just wants hugs. On the other hand, why can’t those hugs wait until actual daytime?Especially since I’m solo all day with them. 😵 I told PiC not to rush back since dun dun dunnnnn JB’s started summer camp today! (And he’s got to pick them up, it’s more on his way than not.)
He couldn’t be back in time to be help at the time I’d need a hand anyway, his meetings conflict. So it’s best for him to just do as much work as he can while he’s on site and he can run some errands on the way back. I did a VERY short Costco run with Smol the other day and was very uncomfortable with the number of unmasked people there. As a percentage, it was low, but the place was more crowded than I had hoped so we ran in and ran out with only exactly the things I remembered we needed.
So we vacuumed a lot, went for a walk (terrible walk, they wanted to be carried half the time and that’s not the point!), played in the garage a bit, played with a few toys, and had two snack times. They were terribly upset when I wouldn’t haul out the heaviest of the vacuum attachments. Life is full of disappointment, I know.
They are understanding a lot more words (today: ate more cheese when I told them to eat more cheese), but still aren’t speaking. They articulate lots of sounds and babble but no actual words. Our check up is this week so we can talk to the pediatrician about this. JB was slow to speak too, I’m really hoping Smol Acrobat won’t require speech therapy. It can be arranged but it’ll be so much harder with COVID.
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