May 30, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 66: 515 am wake-up.
Late last night I looked up ME/CFS to see if my night sweats might be a bonus symptom and it is. It also reminded me that both sore throats and flu symptoms are also normal bonus symptoms. I’ve been on my sore throat from a virus pain management all week to no avail. My throat stayed swollen and raw all week which is unusual for not developing the rest of the full blown cold or flu symptoms. Today I’m thinking this is an escalation of my CFS symptoms. Being solo with Smol Acrobat 3-4 hours a day twice a week is wearing me down harder and faster than usual. But it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. We don’t have daycare until October at the earliest. Le sigh.
So today’s short (naturally) nap was followed up by a looooong play session: checking out the new basket of toys I rotated in (yay new baskets!), working the 35 ml giant syringe I pulled out of a cabinet for their amusement, sitting down for a long session of sunblocking (their request). Followed up by the signs: all done, eat, milk. Remarkably civil compared to last week’s screeching and SITTING ON THEIR HANDS refusing to sign. We vacuumed, then went for a short walk, and then after reading a couple books, they hit the wall HARD. Me too, actually.
In an unusual move, I made myself take an hour to lay down instead of pushing through more work because my health needs it more than work needs to have one more email answered earlier.
Though actually the real internal battle was over taking the time to lay down versus cutting out more fabric for my next projects. I want to have fun, dangit!
But given the state of my hands and throat and head and well, the rest of me, resting had to be the wise move. Also, I need to buy that rotary cutter to help with the straight lines I’m simply not capable of achieving with a pair of scissors. I’ll need to cut out more mask filters as well and those are all straight lines, in bulk. (more…)
May 23, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 59: La Mamá y Pequeño dia!
Ways it started right: I’d made egg salad for today’s lunches yesterday afternoon, and made PiC’s coffee in the early evening so it felt like we were a little ahead of the game for meals. Except dinner, I’m still stumped on dinner. We ate almost all our leftovers yesterday so today will require some kind of planning. Pasta carbonara again? JB calls it cheesy pasta, utterly failing to appreciate the bacon, but that’s ok. I got at least five hours of sleep. There’s nothing quite like reading on your phone to quiet your brain until it lands on your face because you sort of fell asleep but didn’t realize it before gravity took over.
Ways it started wrong: 445 wake up. I persuaded Smol to lay quietly for another 20 minutes. I had nightmares about trying to work and taking care of Smol while both my bosses were around. Then it shifted to trying to put Smol down for a nap but they were unexpectedly sweating and had a heat rash all over their body. Thank goodness it was just a set of nightmares. Then again, it was followed up by a dream about redeeming my hotel points for a weeklong vacation so that was better. I wonder where we would have gone.
*****
I’ve decided that the ending of White Collar was utterly unsatisfying. Yes, it was a lot of clever manipulation to achieve the ultimate end but I thought he’d learned to value his friends and family. How could he just abandon Moz??
*****
Smol-arity: they have an obsession with hugging my foot, and a current refusal to lay still for diaper changes, so today we put them together and had my foot sing them the alphabet while I changed their diaper.
They finally pieced together how to sign Thank You today!!! Very proud moment for mama, papa, and siblings.
*****
Do/did you hoard fancy hotel shampoos and conditioners too? We collected them wherever we went but we never used them it at home. Smol and I packed them up today for donation. I’m on a two week bender of clearing out things. We’re donating and handing down outgrown clothes and unneeded gear that could be put to good use by other folks. I’m claustrophobic from accumulated stuff and we need space for a dear relative to come visit. I want to be done with the mess of outgrown clothing and other household stuff well ahead of their summer visit.
*****
Do you feel your age more when you know eating a food will kick your butt (and you do it anyway) or when you don’t know and it kicks your butt?
Year 3, Day 60: Pizza for dinner last night kicked my butt and Smol’s 5 am wake up kicked PiC’s butt. He was a good sport and kept Smol alive until I dragged myself out to join them. 5 am is even too early for Sera, she won’t budge from her bed until I come out.
*****
We tackled the pasta carbonara today, Smol and I. Smol was screechily indignant that I wouldn’t share the raw diced bacon but they sort of settled down when distracted by apple slices and a bowl of pasta. A pound of garlicky bacon and a pound of diced chicken was tossed with rigatoni and it all came together with the egg/parmesan. Excellent work this afternoon! I made an enormous bowl of it since the “cheesy pasta” is popular. JB asked if we had enough to last the rest of the week. Not the way we eat! But there’s something very satisfying about making a dish that everyone likes eating.
Cooking burned the bulk of my midday time and energy. After we ate, PiC took over for the next two hours with the kids so I could sit down and work (“rest”). My hips were in dire need of rest by 2 pm.
*****
Progress in the room overflowing with kid stuff: toys have been organized into three baskets that will rotate every few days so Smol has the illusion of choice. More baby gear was boxed up, Smol found a brand new kid shirt in the office for the donation box. Donation boxes are piling up and may soon be ready for weighing and shipping. We’re in the stage where everything is worse, but it’s also starting to feel possible to visualize a finish.
Discovery! It’s deeply satisfying to cut out and prep new pieces of fabric for the pouches project. Prep is not my favorite part of sewing but it feels good to be setting up for fun.
My first success is a medicine pouch and it’s already in service. The second pouch will be for JB to store art supplies. The third pouch will be a mini diaper bag (literally just for Smol’s diapers and wipes) that gets tossed in the backpack for outings.
Year 3, Day 61: Huh, I wonder if inappropriately involving other people in your interpersonal relationships is a sign of something. Nicole and Maggie’s post made me recall that, many years ago, an in-law with whom I didn’t get along (but still felt entitled to my good graces despite only ever treating me badly) contacted a mutual friend. They asked this friend how to make me like them. My friend didn’t engage and reported back to me, she felt I should know that person’s mentality. I felt very betrayed at the time. I was a lot younger, I cared about certain opinions more than I should have. But perhaps it’s not a surprise that doing that, instead of speaking to me or treating me like a decent human, did not endear me to them. I didn’t appreciate that manipulation but I also didn’t realize the levels of manipulation that was until later.
*****
Thinking about the market and economy: I think our family is relatively prepared for a standard recession but I’m not so sure about our preparedness for stagflation if that might be on the horizon.
I’m grateful that I committed to a set investing schedule. Hindsight tells me I’d have refused to put money in the market most of this year during the highs and then been stumped when to do a lump sum deposit when it came back down because I’d keep waiting for it to go down “enough” whatever that is.
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TFW you ask the toddler what they want, because of the torrents of whining, and they have perfectly useful baby signs to communicate and instead they literally sit on their hands. 😒
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Mischievous Smol landed with their full weight on my hand and wrist at a bad angle and ouch ouch ouch it hurts. This wrist is particularly prone to triggering flare ups so now I’m paranoid this will decommission my dominant hand for weeks.
*****
I just remembered we need to plan to pack test kits for future travel. Test kits have to be on our permanent travel list for the foreseeable future. So second homemade pouch became the test kit pack. Tonight I cut out fabric and pieced them together for two more pouches. This next one will be JB’s surprise.
Sewing is as fun as I’d assumed it would be for retirement, only it’s fun now. Surprise! I’m learning to make simple things I need and it doesn’t always have to be a huge time commitment. I can spend 10-15 minutes a night doing some part of the fun.
Year 3, Day 62: 5:20 am wake up. 👎
My fatigue induced sore throat yesterday might not have been only fatigue induced after all. It’s back today, and I feel like someone siphoned all my energy. Smol Acrobat and PiC are also sniffling today, all bad signs. My hand and wrist are still aching from yesterday. This is not great. It’s our solo day, me and the littlest. I need to be functional!
Thankfully, they took a really solid first nap. I knocked out a lot of work, my meds finally started working on the sore throat a little, and sitting with heat directly on my aching body for two hours made a real difference. I like a lot of things about the colder weather we live in year round but my body hates it. Doing my solid best to keep away from fear and stress thoughts about my hand and being careful not to tweak it further.
*****
Cars made in this decade are like spaceships. We’re going to need a newer car eventually but I don’t look forward to the learning curve.
*****
Thanks for the reminder, Bethh! I ordered blackout curtains! They said it’d take a month for them to arrive. 🤞 Hoping it’s sooner and hoping it’s the answer to our 5 am wake ups.
*****
By mid-afternoon it was clear I needed a nap. I wasn’t getting one but since I cleared enough off my desk, BUT I gave myself permission to stop working at 5 and take a break. I sewed for a minute, ripped out the seam for four minutes because I sewed on the wrong side, and then sewed it again. Had to force myself to make a better call and stop with the one seam and go lay down. It feels weird to acknowledge that needing or wanting rest is a good enough reason to rest.
Thank goodness for leftovers. PiC cobbled together roasted broccoli and noodles from the pantry to go with the leftover pho broth we had left from earlier.
Year 3, Day 63: 5:20 am. Blergh.
Washing the dishes this morning, a memory surfaced. Now, I’ve never been a good napper, just like I’ve struggled with sleep for as long as I have actual memory (since 5 years old? younger?) This means napping has never been a go to for me. But my dad took an afternoon nap every day of my life. They were both up every morning at the crack of dawn, and worked 18 hour days, but Mom did all the cooking and cleaning and she never once took a nap or a rest. Seriously I can’t remember ever seeing him clean when I was a kid. He did when I was an adult but not when we were growing up. I know I thought about how unfair that was at some point, but that was more in adulthood. How much did this impact my thinking and feelings about taking needed rest? Something to think about.
*****
We’re both at the ends of our respective ropes. He’s burning the candle at both ends (working late and getting up early with Smol) and I’ve been sick all week with very little respite. It’s not great.
Grateful for enough leftovers to serve for dinner tonight. I forced myself to do much of the usual post dinner clean up during dinner prep so I’d have less to do when I finally hit the wall. Sadly my body doesn’t understand how to rest when it’s time to, so often I just keep trucking until the truck hits me. No different tonight, I squeezed in a half hour of sewing to make a markers pouch for JB and a giant pouch for myself for our test kits (and as an experiment in scale).
I’ve got a project brewing mentally and my sewing sister gave me enough guidance for it to brew more seriously than it was before. I needed to get an idea of what size bag would result from the latest extra large measurements. That’ll help me figure out the measurements for a lunch bag for JB. I COULD spend $30 and buy the super cute Hello Kitty lunch bag I want for them. It would almost certainly be cheaper than buying the fabric, the iron on waterproofing, and insulation to make them one. But I kinda really like the idea of making one myself now.
You can see the If You Give A Mouse a Cookieness unfolding in real time here: if you give Revanche a sewing machine, she’s gonna want to buy fabric for all the projects.
May 16, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 52: Smol’s waking up at 445 am was painful but I now have a theory that they’re waking up cold. I noticed their hands and feet were colder than usual and wrapping them up like a burrito and rocking them until they warmed up a little before putting them back to bed seemed to help. It took two tries but it bought us another hour of sleep to the much desired 630 point. Precious hour. PiC took over then and I got to rest just a little longer.
*****
All I wanted to do today was work on my little sewing project. Not work. Booo work. Alas. ’twas not my fate.
Smol granted me two hours of work time which I begrudgingly used wisely and then we were off to the toddler races. They searched the house for anyone else. No dice. Just you, me, and Sera makes three!
They snacked, which was really lunch, hoovering up all the leftovers I had intended to eat. By the time I was done pitching food into their voracious yet picky little maw, I was too tired to find food for myself. After cleanup, they made a strong bid for vacuuming time. They like to vacuum everyday. Or at least they like the sound of it. They went knocking books off shelves like a cat, and then we sat on the ground so they could practice buckling buckles, removing everything from my bag, emptying my travel pouches, and throwing everything out of my wallet. I put it all back in and they’d do it all over again. It gave me a couple ideas for creating more “discovery pouches” for their entertainment.
We picked up JB from school together and they seemed ready for a nap after but the joke was on us. They spent their entire nap period playing.
I crammed in another hour or two of work while they didn’t nap and then abandoned shop entirely for the chance to try and find them some warm pajamas at the local shops. No dice there either, unfortunately.
Thank goodness for crockpot leftovers from the weekend. The four of us dragged back in, exhausted and hungry, from our fruitless little venture and demolished huge servings of Kahlua pork and cabbage on rice. Two thumbs up. Even Smol ate with gusto. A rare treat, that. (more…)
May 9, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 45: What a terrible night of sleep that was. I thought I was physically up for a walk to the play structure with the kids because I made it there and back without feeling like a hollow simulacrum at the end of it but last night’s many many hours of pain say different. Between Smol’s waking up at 1045 pm crying, and my pain, sleep was a series of catnaps, at best.
*****
I don’t understand why people act like divorce is a failure or bad. For example: a commenter or two here but they are just an example of what I see/hear a lot. Sure it doesn’t feel great if a relationship doesn’t work out but isn’t it better to have a way to walk away with both parties intact, should you grow apart, instead of being quietly or destructively (or somewhere between the two) miserable / unhappy? I think it’s wonderful that we have the legal option to exercise even if it wouldn’t feel great at first. Especially women.
Though, I suppose as a currently not-religious person, and who very much ignored all the patriarchal bullshit embedded in the religious background that I grew up in, perhaps that’s where the moral judgement stems from?
Personally, I celebrate all people having the legal ability to leave rather than having that limited just to straight white men with power. I wish everyone had the economic ability to leave too, if they needed.
*****
My 3 hours with Smol started too early because Nap 1 was shorter than usual. We went straight to playing instead of starting with a snack as normal. They were very intent on the new stacking rings toy from the Borrowed Toys box. I used that time to rest a bit, tidy a little, and pack away another bag of 9 month old sized baby clothing for our third and maybe fourth donation box. They cycled through a few more toys solo which bought me time to grab lunch from the fridge (I made the egg salad, PiC made them into sandwiches, teamwork!) and set the table. Usually I don’t have a lot of time before the hawk screeches the walls down around me so that was oddly peaceful. We ate up and then released the Acrobat to play with the vacuum while after clean up. They’re obsessed with both the floor vacuum and the robot vacuum and ask for them every day. Usually it means I’m vacuuming while they sit on my lap and observe with keen interest. It’s a sitting down activity that gets things clean, works for me. As we came up to the three hour mark, they got very cranky and started hitting themselves on the cheeks in frustration over … I don’t know what, but that was a good sign they were pooped out. For good measure, I asked “all done?” and got a very affirmative “all done” sign in return. The attempts to nap were rough and involved at least one round of me going in to give them a cuddle and help them try to settle again. That tear-soaked face was too much. But they finally passed out after an hour of fussing and slept deeply. What a relief.
*****
This tweet hit a little close to home.
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The SCOTUS leak about the inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade was a real winning way to end the night. I’m putting together a list of the funds we’ll donate to tomorrow. I need a little time to process and plan. NNAF’s site is down right now anyway because of traffic so I’d like to let that ease off a little for them and the smaller funds that are on our list.
PiC and I hugged for a long time as I wept my fury at the horrible people in this country tearing down our rights, left, right and center.
Year 3, Day 46: Tiny terrorist number 2 started the morning festivities at 530 am. Thank goodness for PiC.
*****
After school dropoff, Smol signed “all done”. They hadn’t been up 3 hours yet but I gave them a drink of water and we headed for the crib. I’m really glad they’re trying to communicate tiredness again, though I should teach them a sign for that, since “all done” could just mean all done with the thing we’re doing right now. They dropped off to sleep pretty fast for which I’m thoroughly grateful.
*****
After that body blow that is SCOTUS likely overturning Roe v Wade, I really needed some good today. I’ll be donating to abortion and reproductive justice funds later this week.
I put together an update for our Lakota Family contributors. We’ve helped six families directly to date with loads of food, clothing, and household basics. We also sent their Youth Center 35 lbs of supplies, mostly for babies, to distribute to the families when they need them.
*****
2 hours with Smol: we played with musical toys and “your toe wears a block as a hat”. They did a lot of yelling “ja ja ja ja!!!” and a lot of unexplained screeching. After a carb-y lunch, I took the kids out for a walk. PiC had to come along because Smol was being kind of a whiny pain about it. They don’t walk well with just me and Sera. With someone to chase, though, they were happy to walk at least partway around the block. We worked off some of my simmering internal rage at SCOTUS on the weeds and then we did a bit of wandering around in the sun before they pooped out. Weirdly, though they insisted they were all done and wanted to go to bed, they didn’t nap AT ALL. It was just a long solo play session.
*****
I finished enough work earlier in the afternoon to take Smol when they were ready to emerge from solo play, and then took the kids to do another curbside pickup. It’s time to upgrade our toothpaste to the enamel friendly stuff, my dental enamel is not happy. I waved the “old people” Sensodyne at PiC when we got home, and then we enjoyed an earlier than usual dinner of tamales and leftover chicken adobo with rice and green beans.
It was an oddly balanced day: work, Smol Acrobat / JB time, loading and unloading the dishwasher, making PiC’s coffee, and sitting down with our sample ballot for the upcoming primaries to do some research.
There are some candidates on the gubernatorial ticket whose platforms I could get behind but realistically it’s hard to believe they’ll get anywhere. There are some Senatorial candidates who will be about as useful as half a pair of scissors and are about as loopy as a ride at Six Flags. There’s an anti-vaxxer on there, several “my God and my religion will save California” types (no, keep your religion to yourself) , and a few Law and Order Dems that are absolute nos. One of them, a white male Dem who also called himself a hero and incorruptible, and thought his lineage “related to signers of the Declaration” were important to cram in there, touted his Asian-American wife which was kind of gross. It’s mildly cathartic scribbling out those terrible candidates. That leaves a small handful of possible candidates to consider and weigh the likelihood they’ll get anywhere if we vote for them. The candidate from the Socialist Workers Party has the platform I’m most in favor of right now but again, will she get anywhere? Hard to say. Down the ticket, some of the Green party candidates have the stances on issues that I want to move forward but most of them don’t sound even a little prepared to do the work. Their statements are mostly slogans with nothing useful to tell me whether they’d actually understand how to do what they want done in the system we have. One of them is “End poverty in California! Fund schools, housing and healthcare.” Ok, yes. What’s your plan? You have space for at least 500 more words and you did nothing with it. Seems to me if you can’t even write a real candidate statement, you’re not serious about the work. The candidates for AG were particularly irritating. More than half of them were fearmongering and yes, sure, the job is to prosecute crimes but there’s something very unattractive about an AG who’s all about throwing people into jail and says we should “stop emptying our prisons”, or “support the brave men and women of law enforcement”. Sir, we’ve seen the videos. We know who is disproportionately being harmed and it’s not the people in uniform. It might be throwing my vote away but the Green party candidate is a criminal defense and animal rights attorney who said the magic words of “end mass-incarceration” and “reform the criminal justice system”. Do I think he can manage both those things? Well… probably not. But I’d feel a lot less gross voting for him than another compromise candidate. I sure do wish he had a plan of some kind.
Year 3, Day 47: Another 5:30 am wake up with Smol. We spent the first hour together since PiC was crashed out after one too many late work nights.
This early waking thing has gone on more than a couple weeks now. At first, I thought Snough had a point about increasing Smol’s daily physical activity so even though we can’t take them for daily swims, I’ve been taking them for more walks outside. They do PLENTY of running around the house, lots and lots of it, but figured outside air and exertion seemed to be a good idea. Alas, it’s not making any difference at night which, combined with their rash of middle of the night wakings, probably means that they’re getting too much daytime sleep. I hate this. As it is, I’m lucky to get 4-5 hours to work a day so I’m working at hyper speed.
After doing school drop off, three hours with Smol, and school pick up, I was just on the edge of being utterly done in for the day so instead of doing the smart thing and going to rest for a while, I cooked dinner. It was a delicious dinner but I sweated my way through it. Did you know that intense pain can make you sweat? That’s a fun development.
I managed to finish enough work so I could lay down for an hour with a fistful of OTC pain meds. We made it through an early dinner and bedtime to start recovering a little from the day’s energy expenditure but this is definitely one of those wallops that will takes 3-4 more days to come back from. It hardly seems fair that 6 hours of effort translates into 4-5 days of pain and diminished capability but that’s my life.
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Also frustrating: Smol is on an anti-vegetable strike. Even when I cut them up into tiny bits, they’ll eat it up from the spoon and then spit out all the vegetables. They were always fine with the taste of veggie purees, so it seems like it’s the texture they object to, but this is so frustrating!
Year 3, Day 48: After a 230 am sobfest where Smol required a bit of comfort, and we all crawled back to our respective pillows, they slept in until 7 am. That was sorely needed. My entire body is down to the dregs again, and both my hands are feeling fragile. This isn’t going to be a day I can handle the cast iron pan.
Is this the day we go to an official one nap schedule for Smol? PiC protests but I think we should try it even though it makes my heart sad and my body sadder. PiC’s had three 8 am meetings this week and that always makes our lives extra complicated. I have to take a heavier share of the running around with the kids without the ability to take breaks or pace myself like needed. A one nap day is going to make things even harder.
*****
After dropping JB off at school, we did chalk art on the driveway. Or we tried anyway. They asked for more colors and after I brought out more colors, they locked onto the chalk chips from the broken piece of chalk instead and spent their outside time finding little caches for each chip. Good enough activity. I wanted to pop them in the stroller and take Sera for her belated walk but I could already feel the telltale twinges that signaled my body’s need to crash. I knew that Sera could hang out for a little longer so for once, I listened to my body and kept Smol on a low-key activity run until PiC could take over.
Even after two hours of sitting down, the pain was creating waves of nausea. I vaguely think about how much I don’t want to play through the pain but that’s not really a choice now, is it? At around hour 3 and a half, the nausea eased up a bit. Just in time for Smol to wake up from their one nap of the day. O_O
PiC and I swapped off every two hours of Smol-minding which got us through enough work to end the evening at a reasonable hour. I took the kids for a short walk for the pre-dinner hour and he started reheating the leftovers. Teamwork! Very tired team. But it works.
Year 3, Day 49: Phew. Every night gets more brutal. Smol woke up crying three times in the middle of the night, needing brief consolation before they could go back for another nap. I couldn’t get back to sleep properly between each wake up so the 45 minutes that I finally got when PiC took them out at 630 was not even close to enough. PiC took one of the wake ups, he was still working during the first one and solidly passed out for the third, but he has this gift of being able to sleep through almost anything when he’s tired. Unlike my body which makes no sense and can’t sleep when exhausted. I’m starting to think it’s something to do with my hypervigilence. Some day, I will learn to sleep soundly. Until then, willpower and water.
*****
After their first nap, during which I was both thoroughly mired in brain fog but still got a whole mass of work done, Smol and I shuffled to the kitchen for cleaning and cooking and snacking. They were amazingly cooperative, for them, and sat in their high chair poking and prodding their food and occasionally even eating it while I cleaned the counters, unloaded the dishwasher, handwashed all the stuff that needed handwashing and got ready for the main event: getting 16 lbs of pork shoulder cooked. The smaller half of that went into the crockpot, it’ll become Kahlua pork and cabbage for the weekend. The larger half went into the oven for a very low and slow roast. That’ll be one dinner tonight and the rest will be frozen and help us out one night and a couple lunches down the road. After you take out the fat and the bones, there’s a fair bit of meat but not as much as you’d expect.
After a full afternoon of work and a little work on the Lakota Families tracking page to log a couple new contributions, I was pleased to be cutting up the shoulder and prepping the freezer packs. Something about cutting up sale priced protein and putting it away for a later meal felt like home to me. Felt like I was myself again for a few minutes. I guess I feel most comfortable when I’m putting a lot of effort into saving money and planning ahead to feed my family.
My legs and back were not so pleased, but when are they ever happy with me these days? The gel mat in the kitchen makes a world of difference though. I wouldn’t be able to move for a week if I were on my feet on the tile for that hour. The gel mat is old and the edges are curling up and breaking but the main part of the mat is still saving my bones.
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Smol was very pleased about the boxes I’ve been leaving out for them. While JB worked on an art project, Smol was putting things in the box and taking them out again for companionship as they cruised around the house. They also like tearing bits off the cardboard and eating them or dipping them in Sera’s water bowl or bringing them to me as small temporary offerings. Then they ask for them back.
Still no luck convincing them to color with the crayon eggs, those eggs are still nothing but entertaining toys to be rotated in their tray repeatedly.
May 2, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 38: Yesterday was a rollercoaster day: lots of conflict with JB; made egg salad for today’s lunches; worked some but mostly laid down as much as I could. After all that, I anticipated today would be Extra Rough. BUT *happy surprise* the day started with slightly lower than nausea-inducing pain. Dare I hope that today’s pain and fatigue on a PiC away at work day will be approximately at normal levels rather than the past few weeks of awful? I need to practice having hope. I’m going to pace myself, not take the emergency meds, and hope for the best.
*****
These sparkly flats made me smile. A shame they can’t possibly have all the cushioning I need in shoes but I appreciate their adorableness.
*****
We have entered the age of tantrum and going boneless. I didn’t miss this!
Our three hours today were packed: We read two books, then had a big bowl of fruit for snack. Egg salad for lunch. Washed up and then Smol asked for some time with the vacuum. We vacuumed the closet and once it was cleaned, moved along to trying a new to us toy. Once they got bored, I suggested a walk so they brought me some socks. We took Sera for a poke-along 9-cracker walk. We all got very brisk fresh air. Smol pooped out at the end of our walk on their last cracker and kept sitting down on the sidewalk but they had plenty of energy to continue playing in the backyard once I hauled them there like a sack of squirming potatoes. Sera sunbathed while we played, and had music time. Smol was increasingly whinier with each “no” until they finally caved and admitted with their sign “all done”. They slowly settled down for a nap while I hit the books again and did as much work as I could.
Physically, I’m bone tired, even my face hurts, but I don’t want to crawl under my desk and stay there. This is definitely better than last week.
PiC picked JB up from school while I kept hacking away at piles of work and minded both kids for a bit after Smol woke. I did just about as much as I could stand and hit the leftovers for dinner. Thank goodness for leftovers. I’ll try to cook dinner tomorrow morning.
Smol development!: We got to work on boundaries over dinner. They Greatly Desired the fortune cookies across the table. I allowed them to have half of one. They wanted “more, please.” I said sorry, no, those are not ours. We had ours. Their face scrunched up in dismay and they squealed with anger. Nope. Face scrunched up and this time, actual tears. Still no. Higher pitched screech. Still no. We experienced a new octave, prolonged. Nope.
We worked through all the upset and emotion, we had a little chat about how even if we ask politely sometimes the answer is no, and we definitely don’t get things by way of tantrums. They eventually calmed down and moved on.
Year 3, Day 39: I’ve never enjoyed drinking a cup of coffee in my life, much as I want to, but I’ve made many coffees for PiC over the years and he always claims they were good. He takes it seriously enough that I don’t think he’d pander to my ego if they weren’t good. Since my experimenting with the French press a few days ago, I’ve been dubbed the superior coffeemaker. It turns out that’s because I don’t follow directions. Or rather, I don’t remember them. I asked him for his ratio of grounds to water and then promptly forgot. I feel like he said something like 1 tbsp to 4 oz? Maybe? But it was late and I wasn’t that invested in remembering so I brewed it my way, at twice the concentration and voila! Liquid gold! He was duly impressed until I revealed the ratio and then he was appalled at my profligate use of beans. What? It made an excellent cup didn’t it? So the next batch I made, he got to choose: liquid gold or meh silver?
*****
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April 25, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 31: JB has another wiggly tooth and we’ve gone from the excitement of having a wiggly tooth to Extreme Angst Because It Hurrrrtttssssss. I hope we’re not stuck in this stage for long.
*****
JB has the day off from school and it’s PiC’s day in the office so I get to work with both kids at home with me! Yippee!
/extreme sarcasm
Since I’m still in a bad fatigue flare-up, I took my in-case-of-emergency (really bad fatigue) days pill and hoped it would help. This is the second time I’ve tried it. The first time was when my brain fog was physically painful, and I couldn’t tell if the meds were why it partially cleared in the afternoon Today’s experience: it doesn’t give me energy or reduce pain. It paused the incredibly painful crashing downward spiral I’ve been experiencing every day for the past few weeks. It’s hitting a hold button (and leaves a bad taste in my mouth). I crashed later in the night so the pause analogy seems appropriate.
JB was assigned to doing Correspondence and self directed activities when Smol was napping and to play with Smol part of the time they were awake so I could get through small bits of work. I’m doing the serious Smol stuff: diaper changes, feeding (OMG this is such a pain), and navigating transitions.
We survived until PiC got home at 430 pm. I wish I felt better but we limped over the finish line and a finish is a finish.
*****
PiC met a parent at the park yesterday who speaks only Japanese at home with their daughter so their daughter is primarily fluent in Japanese and man do we feel like failures. Neither of us are fluent enough in our secondary languages to pass on much to the kids, but I’d hoped to pass on at least what we have. That’s not going well.
Also under the Feelings category, I’m pretty sure that Smol isn’t hitting any of their age appropriate milestones. They have a lot of babble but no words. It worries me. Yes kids hit them all at different ages but until we get past this I’m going to worry. JB struggled with this too and that was a really rough ride for us all.
Year 3, Day 32: The kids are both big enough to be shifted out of their current car seat situations (Smol from their infant / toddler and JB from their convertible seat they’ve been using for the past 5 years). Smol will get JB’s seat and JB’s getting a new booster. I ordered the new booster yesterday with our 20% off coupon from trading in an expired baby seat and am so mentally wiped that I thought “April 21” was two weeks from now. No, it’s actually two days from today. So yay! I hate hate hate that I haven’t been able to haul the kids on my own in part because the car seat was always too hard on my hands. Now, I may be able to take them SOME places.
***** (more…)
April 18, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 24: Well hello Monday. Starting at midnight with the utterly brutal pain that made it hard to breathe, and then moving right along to the four am wakeup with Smol who somehow managed to drape a blanket completely over themselves like a tiny distressed ghostie and cried for rescue. After a few rounds of patting and signing, they settled back down for a couple more hours. We got our real morning started around 630, that superb night under my belt, with a downpour that didn’t bode well for JB’s playground ambitions.
No wonder I’m tired before I start work. No wonder it felt like two days compressed into one.
*****
Work felt exponentially more repellent than it should (than usual?). Nothing was actually wrong aside from a couple annoying policy problems I have to deal with. It’s probably that I’m just worn to a thread already and now my brain must somehow turn on and do stuff. Yes of course why not.
*****
PiC’s work informed him that he’d had a close contact exposure to COVID at work last week and JB’s school informed us that they had a close contact exposure today. This does nothing good for my frustrations with how much we’ve endured and how stupid policies are right now. (Why did it take his work a WEEK to inform him??)
Year 3, Day 25: Two huge reliefs. My pain was a bit less than yesterday’s so I got to sleep and Smol slept right through to 7 am so I got almost 6 unbroken hours! Huge. Not restorative but at least it’s not taking two steps backwards like most nights.
*****
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