January 31, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 316: We don’t technically live paycheck to paycheck but I sure do look forward to payday as if we do. About six days before we get paid my radar starts going up, every two weeks. Where’s my money. I want it Right Now. I wonder if that twitch will ever wear off…
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I am not sure if the principal is deliberately misleading us but they’ve only notified us of a handful of cases. When I check the district dashboard, that reports 6x more cases than what the principal has reported. This isn’t doing good things for my stress levels.
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Related: I have been noticing the urge to shop more and more often. Not an urge to get something specific that we need – just an urge to shop. Which tells me that I’m seeking endorphins to combat the stress chemicals racing around my body.
The thing is, once I identify the want to shop, rather than the want to acquire things, I remember that I don’t want a quick hit of dopamine. I’m craving more peace and tranquility, more smooth and longlasting doses of quiet and rest and recuperation. The quick hit seems more achievable but it’s not the healthy stuff I actually want.
I don’t know how to get the part though.
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I AM proud of making dinner tonight. I tried this baked panko chicken recipe (thanks for the idea, Hawaii Planner!), with a big salad and roasted potatoes on the side. Everyone liked it, eventually. Smol was my Pickypants holdout spitting out everything I gave them but it turns out they were just being their usual kind of ornery and not wanting much of dinner until JB brought them a banana. That, they ate happily. Pickypants. (more…)
January 24, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 309: Everyone else has the day off today and I’m jealous. I’m also annoyed because JB’s morning shenanigans wasted an hour of my work time which means I can’t knock off early or take a long lunch time walk with them. Humph.
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Over the weekend, I made a pasta sauce with ground turkey. I set aside half for one meal this week and half to freeze. We also dug up our teeny tiny potato harvest and I think they’re going to become a plate of crispy garlic roast potatoes. Twitter enlightened me to the magic of parboiling and it works!
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My phone continues to mess with me. Adding to the randomly turning off trick, the keyboard has begun to refuse to actually type at a normal speed and inserting random caps locks and spaces at will. That’s less than ideal. I started researching possible replacement phones over the weekend and got really useful info from folks on Twitter. I think I’ve narrowed down my preferred candidates to three Samsungs: S10, S10e and S20.
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I should NOT have eaten that many shrimp chips in one sitting. 😶
Year 2, Day 310: It’s been a solid two weeks on a new supplements regimen and I think it has been doing some good for my fatigue. I was at rock bottom for my annual exam a few months ago. They referred me to a specialist who gave me a whole slew of lifestyle modification recommendations, some of which I already do, and the one that was easiest to act on was adding a lot of supplements to my daily routine. It’s still early yet to know if it really works for me but even with my other heartburn and heart palpitation issues, I’m a step up from my lay on the floor because I’m so steamrollered and hollowed out and can’t breathe mode.
Obviously still deeply fatigued, as one step away from rock bottom is not much and can be reached easily by a little overdoing it but still. It’s a step up that I’m on most days and I’m really grateful for that much. More please.
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PiC fixed our water filter! Three cheers for PiC! It only took a $250 full replacement of parts which apparently has to happen every 3-4 years. 👀
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JB is really into chorizo burritos these days. We only tried it because of a mistake, we were given someone else’s order. But fun surprise for us, they’re good!
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I hate the plastic waste related to this but I’ve had to make some food plastic concessions for our sanity and energy. We have been going through our fresh fruits and veggies too fast, usually running out before the next shopping trip and we’re trying to keep our shopping time minimal, so I’ve bought cases of fruit cups. When we run out of whole fruit, we still have something for the kids. It helps us bridge gaps and reduces my stressing over that element of their diets when we’re juggling so much.
On that subject, feeding Smol has been a real challenge. They’re so opinionated about what and when they eat that they can spend an entire dinner yelling at me and waving their arms in negatory gestures. The fruit cups help smooth the way to their eating a balanced meal.
Speaking of dinner, I managed to make a lentil salad and salmon dinner tonight! It’s the first night in weeks that I was able to take up my dinner duties again and I’m so relieved to be capable of cooking again.
Year 2, Day 311: I had to gain consciousness at 4 am in part 3 of Smol’s jaunt down FUBAR Sleep Lane. First it was a diaper change. PiC took care of that and then passed out. 20 minutes later, Smol was hollering because they were hungry. PiC speculated (hours later) that we’re hitting another growth period where they’re hungrier faster than usual, but also they were a right pain about eating yesterday so I’m sure they simply failed to get enough calories during the day. I cuddled them in our bed while they drank a bottle (still trying to wean them) and then plopped them back into bed. I couldn’t get back to sleep until just after 5, expecting that I’d really regret going back to sleep later. I did. It was HARD waking up again to take JB to school and get to work!
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I had what should have been my last ortho appt today. PiC said that was fast! I said that felt like an eternity! He said, well that’s because you were holding your breath for 20 minutes!
It’s true.
My ortho is incredibly brisk and to the point which I VERY much appreciated in a time when I wanted to get in and out as fast as I can. It turns out I’m not done yet, alas. They still need a bit more work so while he’s removed the little bits that hold the aligners on, he’s also ordering another set of treatment trays.
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I made dinner two nights in a row! I’m happy that my thrown together chicken in enchilada sauce turned into taco salad night with blue corn taco shells, romaine lettuce and tomatoes, Mexican rice we’d had frozen in the pantry, and guacamole! We both grew up almost exclusively on our respective Asian cuisines but in a pinch, what I can throw together is an approximation of Mexican food for dinner with pantry foods. We’re kinda weird.
Year 2, Day 312: Up at 5 am with Smol, both PiC and I were. Ugh. Why. What have we done to be punished so??
We did our best to keep on chugging today, but it was quite a slog to keep the body and brain in motion.
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My annual collection of tax forms dance has begun! I’ve got a W2, a 1099, just twenty more forms to go! I’ll have to wait up until the end of February to get my Vanguard forms. Booooo. I always look forward to being done with filing so of course I’m on tenterhooks the whole of January and February trying to gather all the forms.
I don’t know why I enjoy this but I do.
Year 2, Day 313: Smol slept well all night!!!! We didn’t have to get up at 4 or 5 am!!!
So that was exciting. AND we’re speculating maybe all the wake ups this week was for a developmental purpose because today, instead of screeching all throughout their meal(s), Smol suddenly started pointing with a purpose which clearly communicated what they wanted at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was amazing. It was so much better than the dramatic hollering at random that was impossible to figure out.
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JB celebrated their 100th day of school today. (We all did, because as I pointed out, this was not a solo endeavor.) They had a crown, and wrote 100 words as fast as they could, and brought in 100 small items to share. We had cheesecake for dessert with pretend candles to top it off.
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I’ve gone without a massage for several months and underestimated how severely I’d be in pain after my first one back. After much deliberation and anxiety, I’d taken up an appointment today and it felt good at the time. But the physical feedback afterward had me curled up on the floor in pain by the evening. Seamus and I used to share my heavy duty pain meds to manage his arthritis. Now I’m using his leftover heavy duty pain meds. Turn and turn about.
I couldn’t sleep until 5 am because that’s the tradeoff for being in slightly less than excruciating pain: having a brain that simply cannot fall asleep for the entire night. I wonder if pain meds actually reduce anyone’s pain because my experience with it has always been, at best, a temporary and mild reduction in pain with horrible side effects.
Maybe there’s a different med I can try in the future.
January 17, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 302: After a too active weekend, I started this day in a bad place. Bad mood, drained of energy, short of breath, mostly zombie.
I think everyone started around the same place because our morning was no good.
The rest of the day boded ill as well with Smol waking up early from their afternoon nap, but it got better once we adults flipped our mental commitments from work to family. Though too early, we stopped trying to squeeze in work and went for a walk in preparation for an earlyish dinner.
That was better. Then having a fun Zoom call with family helped revive my spirits a lot. Some days feel like weeks, this was one of them.
Year 2, Day 303: Have you ever had dreams about your adult teeth falling out? I used to have a recurring dream where I wiggle a tooth so much it falls out and then I realize it was an adult tooth and I needed that!!
Those all came back today when JB asked me to wiggle their loose tooth, and then to pull it out. *Shiver* I’d like to pull it out but it’s not ready yet. UGH.
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Taking my fun where I can find it: tickling the breath out of Smol when they’re up for it. They also like plonking their face on my head and smushing their face into my face. Then they rub their face onto my face like a cat, and start chuckling. They’ve also discovered bouncing today. Happy bounce, angry bounce, shrieky bounce, giggly bounce. They tuck their legs underneath them and bounce! bounce! bounce!
I also quizzed, wait, no, interrogated PiC on his retirement desires and goals.
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January 10, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 295: What’d we do last year for Christmas? PiC asked. I don’t remember but I was a lot less stressed and anxious since we did no socializing. Though we also had a tiny baby so … Probably not less stressed but certainly less anxious than this year.
Today I had childcare coverage all day in the form of PiC still being off work one more day and it was both amazing and a grind because then I really really really had to make the most of that focused work time. I got caught up on a lot of important or overdue stuff with some intense effort to stay on task, so that’s something. I was sad to have missed out on midday baby snuffles and snuggles but that’s the trade off, isn’t it?
PiC took care of everything today: dog walks, feedings, kids, lunch, and dinner. I’ve got a great partner.
I’m still decompressing from a remarkably tough holiday season. We socialized much more than usual. We were super careful everywhere (vaxxed, masked, no indoor dining, running an air purifier wherever we could) and the anxiety that it still wouldn’t be enough was ever present. There was a lot of internal conflict when I met with conservative family members who did respect my needs (masked and outdoors meeting) but still clearly expressed their views which are in direct opposition to mine. We were able to say our goodbyes to a longtime friend and carried a lot of sadness back with us. My fatigue was always so bad that I felt sick most of the time – it expresses itself as cold symptoms when I’ve gone too far. Of course I rapid tested to be sure it was just my body sending up alarms and not COVID. Naturally that was another source of anxiety: we didn’t have enough rapid tests for the serial testing that I’d prefer considering omicron was taking off in the days after we’d hit the road. I was also trying to get all of us an appointment for PCR tests so we could be reasonably certain we were all COVID free before returning to school and that was an inordinate amount of effort. Of course I was working the entire time we traveled. Basically I now don’t want to leave my house for a month. Maybe two. (more…)
January 3, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 288: In the spirit of caring about the little things we have, I’m a bit sad that I’ve finally worn holes through my blue socks. They’re the socks that PiC gave me ten or so years ago, and they’ve been good socks. They’ll be missed.
I also discovered the limits of our plastic ziplock bags. We’ve been using some of these for almost 7 years, and I put them back into rotation for the last time this week. I put my thumb through the side of two of the oldest bags. Whoops! We have stretched their lives as long as we could, though, and I’m proud that we are teaching JB not treat plastic bags as disposable either. I know on the grand scale this doesn’t matter but it matters to me that we make an effort to get the most use out of everything we have and not just cycle through waste thoughtlessly.
Year 2, Day 289: JB (and I do too) count every little get together with family or friends as another Christmas. There have been a lot. We’re masked, vaccinated, and running an air purifier for every possible encounter, and we’ve been rapid testing, but I’m still antsy so have been looking for PCR tests for days. I don’t want to be irresponsible sending JB to school if they’re somehow an asymptomatic carrier!
I finally lucked out and got appointments for all of us next week which is later than I wanted but at least it’s earlier in the week than what I was finding last week.
Year 2, Day 290: Our friend has passed. I’d been holding my breath going into Christmas Day and then again after when we didn’t hear anything. The moment I forgot to hold it, we got the news.
I was grieving coming up to this point and now I just feel hollow. 9 losses in the last twelve months.
I’m glad we were able to hold her hand one last time. I’m glad she was able to ask for a kiss and be delighted by it. I’m glad she was well loved and she knew it. But I’m so mad that we lost her so soon. I’m so mad we lost so many this year too soon. (more…)
December 27, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 281: Intense family time began over the weekend (though any extended-family time is intense for me these days) and will continue in some form until the end of the year.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to spend quality time with these aunties, one at a time, but it’s also a whole LOT of juggling trying to figure out work and childminding and socializing and how to allocate my energy and and and. The holiday season intensifies my brain fog something wicked.
I set out a very specific schedule to ensure that we balance our many human and canine needs (which unfortunately always includes work for me) and space the socializing enough to make it through the whole schedule. I try really really hard not to make any mistakes but we had one this year that required shuffling of plans and I thought it was very telling that I was so so relieved that the error wasn’t mine. It’s ok for other people to make mistakes but not me, still. SMH.
Year 2, Day 282: JB got a lesson in setting a formal dining table and an adventure in shopping for shoes (masked, not around many other people, lots of open air).
They even got to visit with the fluffiest cats who were friendly as anything and willing to let both kids pet them. It was an absolute delight. We’ve worked really hard on JB’s cat manners and I was so proud when they remembered all of it well enough that the cats approached them.
Year 2, Day 283: My energy, it is drained. I have all kinds of work nonsense to figure out and it’s still Intense Family Time too. Juggle juggle juggle juggle SMASH.
Ok nothing has smashed quite yet but it’s not great. I did get one tiny bright spot of good news at work though which should make our lives 2% better (at first) and I hope for a rapid increase in improvement after that. But still, I must first wade through the nonsense. And make PHONE CALLS. Yuck.
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December 20, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 274: I’m a shambling mess today. Wait that implies an ability to move. Scratch that. Just a mess, then. The combo of the cold and then the booster trying to teach my immune system to do a thing has produced an internal storm of fatigue, full body aches, nausea chills and hot flashes that may be fever except I’m too beat to check to see. I took the day off because I couldn’t sit up and alternately shivered and sweated it out while PiC held down the fort. Absolutely misery. He’s a champ considering he also didn’t feel well at all and still he kept all the kids alive, fed, safe and warm when I couldn’t lift a finger to save myself. He should be the standard for partners, not the exception.
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It looks like my official CFS diagnosis is recorded after all. I wasn’t sure but the doc confirmed today that I fit all the parameters. She suggested a number of mitigation strategies that mainly add up to “work with the little you have instead of wishing for more or acting like you can power through because that’ll make it worse.”
And ok that makes sense but also I hate it.
Sigh.
So I have to consider getting a wearable to teach my heart rate to see if that helps inform my daily activity choices. Often CFS folks will see their heart rate spike when they’re overdoing it. I have to think about whether I want to try an off label medication that seems to help about 25% of patients with both pain and fatigue. But mostly I have to accept working within my limitations so that I don’t always run on empty which will make the CFS worse.
Year 2, Day 275: I’m … Less terrible today. I’m at this kitten’s level of strength.
Luckily PiCs been chugging along doing his AND my share of chores: cooking all meals, cleaning, picking and dropping off JB at school, walking, minding Smol in between naps. We’d be doomed if not for him.
But I can tell the rest is helping, slowly but surely. I’m still miserable but it’s not as bad as it was yesterday and maybe won’t be as bad tomorrow. I hope our fresh boosters mean we have really solid protection against omicron. I just have to play a firm defense for Smol Acrobat since they have zero protections.
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Oh good news: JB is fully vaxxed!! Yay protection for one kid!
Come on vaccines for the under 5 and under 2 groups!!
Year 2, Day 276: I had a huge disappointment with a work project today and I had to rant about it a bit. It’s going to have a big impact on me and my team and I am just too tired to rally right now. So I’m going to schedule in a break before I tackle it again.
Year 2, Day 277: Had an absolutely awful physical and mental health day today. They fed into each other and I found my brain chasing its tail down the well worn corridors of: you’re physically useless so you’re just a burden (the number of times I heard that word from a relative…), I fight every day to do my best and my best still isn’t good enough so why should I keep fighting. I found myself in that unbelievably angry and bitter place in short order, set off by the smallest of remarks. It was rough.
I managed to remind myself that when I hurt the most physically, I feel the most vulnerable emotionally, and that’s when I feel like I must go on the attack against myself so that others can’t hurt me again. If I tear myself down first, no one else can hurt me the same way.
It’s familiar but it’s not healthy and it took some hours to work through.
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Hello, wall of planning paralysis. I’d normally be much more ready for the holidays by this time in the month but I lost so much time to illness and fatigue that my spirit has given up on trying to get to the normal level of readiness. I skipped designing, ordering, and mailing holiday cards entirely, that cut out one huge swath of time sink but the remaining tasks are Herculean. For all the niblings I won’t be seeing this year, I should have gotten their cards in the mail two weeks ago. I haven’t even put them in envelopes today!
Year 2, Day 278: I’ve been working from bed all week to conserve energy and my butt is ten kinds of numb. I really need a better pillow support system / set up. Something that supports my back and neck when I’m sitting more straight up and allows support to move with me when I have to slide down.
JB gets out of school REALLY early today and thankfully PiC has arranged his schedule to mostly be off so that he can cover the children and let me work and get caught up on my ridiculous backlog of work that built up over the past 3 weeks of me being totally off my game.
I went from intense working mode into full holiday prep mode and by 8 pm, right about when I had intended to go back to work and clear up some more work, it hit me that I am so very very tired.
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I thought I’d read this elsewhere but happened across it on AITA again recently and had to laugh how spot on this is: the narcissist’s prayer.
“That didn’t happen! And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, it wasn’t my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.”
:: Hope you had a great weekend!