October 4, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 197: What a day. Up three times to the piercing screams of a Very Sad Baby with a low grade fever, even though PiC was going to cover, because I can’t sleep through that ruckus and it’s really hard for one of us to medicate an uncooperative baby at night. He took the last call alone because I couldn’t move anymore but I couldn’t stop myself propelling my body out of bed automatically the first two times. Unintentional, but still. The damage was done.
Whatever it is that started the fever in Smol also left them with general fussiness (so many tears, soooo many tears) and a red nose. I can’t see any other obvious symptoms – no coughing or sneezing but they have cried so hard they’ve thrown up on me, twice. This is NOT our deal, child. Vomit –> PiC. Not Me. Sigh. At least it’s not sick vomit, and yes, there is a difference. And somehow it matters to my brain.
Of course the virus also took out my ability to function. Every millimeter aches, breathing hurts, my brain can only zero in on faults (that floor is filthy and needs to be scrubbed!), I’m feeling sad and angry and lonely and isolated. But I don’t want to talk to anyone because I’m angry and tired and hurting.
I’m sad that when this happens, the load all falls on PiC. I’m sad that I have a million dishes to keep spinning and when I’m sick, I cannot spin but half of them, if that. I hate feeling this way. I hate feeling physically crappy and feeling emotionally like a scooped out husk of a fruit rind. I’m also mad that my body still cannot handle viruses.
Turns out, of course, Smol Acrobat does not like taking medicine, and found that alternating a few CCs of meds with a scoop of yogurt helps that medicine go down. I had to take the morning part since he had meetings he couldn’t cancel but thankfully PiC quickly took the rest of the day and tomorrow off so that he can be primary childminder and I can get some rest.
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September 27, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 190: I woke up and realized it was Monday. Boo. But it doesn’t feel terrible right off the bat. Especially since Smol managed to sleep til 615 and PiC took them for an hour so I got to roll over and doze for a little longer before getting up and getting breakfast ready. I’m liking my current iteration of eggs: scrambled with diced tomatoes, ham, and cheese. It checks off the JB requirement of cheese and mine of incorporating some kind of vegetable (or … fruit?).
*****
PiC and I are so different. I interrupted him doing his pre-walk round up of things and he forgot to grab a poop bag for Sera. Me? I won’t risk running out without one so I stuff two bags in every jacket pocket and two rolls of poop bags in my dog walking pouch.
He buys supplies as we run out. I insist on stocking up two months’ or more of non-perishable or long-storing food and supplies.
I think this is fairly representative of our different approaches to life and money. 😂 (more…)
September 20, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 183: Ow.
Spiritually: I had a dream about dead loved ones being alive and that always hurts my soul. Emotionally, I’ve been reading Codependent No More and some of the stuff I identify with there is slightly jarring. None of it is actually a surprise, I’d already identified those compulsions in myself as things that don’t serve me and need to stop. But it’s still a bit jarring in the early phase. Physically, I put Smol Acrobat in the baby carrier for a short walk today and the impact on my entire body is unbelievable. Ow ow ow and ow.
Parenting pain: we’re in some kind of regression with Smol where they don’t want much solid food, we have to compensate with formula, and they aren’t sleeping even 9 hours at night.
*****
I could feel the urge for retail therapy nipping at me today. I noticed it and I acknowledged that I felt like that. Eventually it passed.
Which is not to say I don’t have plans to spend money. I have a couple but they’re very intentional. One is for my holiday gifts for a large swath of niblings and supporting a creator while I’m at it. One was for supporting an author whose work I have long enjoyed. I did the latter already.
But those plans exist separately from that urge to distract and numb from my real feelings.
After a while, I felt like I recognized what was bubbling up. I’m feeling lonely and isolated emotionally. I miss my dearest friends. I feel like my second child isn’t nearly as loved and cared for within the community as JB was. I know a huge part of that is because of the pandemic. People literally cannot be here to visit the way they did with JB was this age, nor does anyone really have the capacity to show their caring in other ways. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, they simply can’t be here. Much like my pregnancy, the flip side of not hearing all the judginess and the snark and the unwelcome advice because no one was around is that I also didn’t get to feel loved the way I might have in non-pandemic times because no one is around.
Even if it’s not true, the feelings feed the monster in me that insists I don’t deserve love and my fear of rejection. One of the things my therapist will ask me is “is that reality or is that perception?” In a lot of cases I don’t feel like I can tell the difference. It feels true that I don’t deserve love, that I won’t amount to anything, that nothing I do matters. I don’t know if that’s true because if not by my own measure, then by what would I be judging this stuff? In this case even if it feels true that I am isolated from my community and I feel that it’s because no one cares about us, it’s probably more true that people are just really busy with their own lives and own troubles and it has nothing to do with us.
I’m noticing this more as I make my way through therapy and my reading. I’m partway through “Codependent No More” and so far it’s not telling me anything I don’t have some sense of but it’s good to read it.
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September 13, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 176: I’m feeling so conflicted. Day to day, I feel like we have more than enough to share more generously with people who need a helping hand. Everyone else’s struggles remind me frequently how fortunate we are. But I worked my tail off to get here specifically because I am concerned about the murky future and my ability to work. It’s very important to give but I’m also responsible for keeping our own parachutes in good repair. Even with whatever work I do to improve my health, which I can only do now because I’ve been so aggressive with saving that we can afford some of that crucial healthcare, my baseline immune system is unreliable. I need to be able to step away from work earlier than later. Mortality aside, I don’t have good years in the tank. At best, they’re slightly less crappy than before years. They’re dominated by pain, fatigue, and limited range of motion. I want to have more freedom to use my precious energy only / mostly on what’s actually important to me and my family, which doesn’t include working a job. I feel selfish about taking care of myself financially. I shouldn’t. But I do.
In writing this, I just realized what it is. I feel selfish for taking care of myself first. If you told me that I had to look out for JB’s health future because they had chronic health issues, I would take on the world to make sure it was as secure as possible. If it was Smol or PiC on the line? Same thing. But because it’s me who is the “weak link”, well, I’m reverting to form and saying that I’m not good enough to be a priority.
Look at that, spotting an unhealthy pattern happening right there.
It’s wild that it’s hard for me to say: It’s ok to take care of myself. It’s ok to secure my future. It’s ok to make sure that I have choices even if I wasn’t thinking about making sure I wasn’t a burden on my kids in the future.
*****
We’re so grateful for the holiday weekend. I still had work to do but the reprieve was so much needed. We spent the whole weekend at home doing all the needed chores and trying to rest and reset.
Year 2, Day 177: Related to yesterday’s thoughts: My job isn’t actually a bad one, especially when I remember to put reasonable limits on the madness during times of extra stress, but I am definitely still reacting very negatively to the most minor provocations that at best deserve an eyeroll. I’m so tired of work. I’m also just so tired. This tiredness frequently puts me in the negative spiral mood: thinking that I wish we were further along in our FI journey so I could exercise the choice to not work for a long period of time. Getting mad thinking about all the money I wasted taking care of a lying, selfish grifter father because that much money invested back then would have made SUCH a massive difference in our choices today. I can’t even let myself run those numbers because to have the confirmation in numbers that it would have made it possible for us to have better choices during this terrible time makes me mad enough to spit.
Sadly, I can’t take a leave of absence and come back to this job. The team is too small to do without me and keep my job for me. I’m also very much not interested in any of the compromises I’d have to make for every other job out there, I’ve looked, so keeping this job is the least worst of all the available options that I am aware of. Sigh. Anyway, getting that off my chest periodically helps release that pressure and stop the If Only spiral by reminding myself I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time and now I’m doing the best I can too.
Part of me grumbles that I did a piss poor job back then so why should I take comfort now with the knowledge that maybe I don’t have all the relevant information and maybe I’m just in a perpetual cycle of screwing up but I suspect that’s a new bad spiral.
*****
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September 6, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 169: Oh Monday. PiC took the 630-930 am shift so I could take JB to school and then try to get some work done. I’m doing my best to stay focused in the time we have when Smol Acrobat is asleep. They had a rough go of it with the first nap, waking up after half an hour and crying inconsolably for an hour. Literally inconsolable, I changed their diaper, changed their sleep sack to a warmer one, offered a bottle, patted them, sang to them, rocked them, nothing. None of it helped. Eventually they physically pushed me away and I had to let them work it out on their own in the crib. I could only watch helplessly on the monitor. Thankfully they were clearly safe and just really tired, and eventually did pass out.
*****
I’m worried for my friends, near and far, affected by horrible COVID-related policies and threatened by wildfires. I miss my friend who is fighting a serious mental health battle and I worry about them. I’m worried for a loved one who seems to be making the same mistakes that have been a pattern all their life. I’m worried about my own sanity – my work has (temporarily) tripled and it’s not like there were enough hours in the day for the original work, which is piled atop my worries for JB’s safety at school and whatever is going to happen with this recall. There’s a lot of emotional turmoil and I’m trying to find moments of less turmoil rather than relief since I’ll just get angrier when I’m not relieved. I just want to stress bake cookies.
The emotion breaks out at odd times. Yesterday, I was stretching and just burst into tears. Smol Acrobat watched me with intent interest for a while and then started to laugh because faces are funny. Which in turn made me laugh a little.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was stretching today but the emotion surge was less intense.
Insomnia still plagues me intermittently through each night. I can catch a little sleep in naps now and again but I keep waking up and struggling to go back to sleep. Sleeping like a baby, indeed.
Year 2, Day 170: I’m starting to turtle up emotionally. It’s been too much turmoil and worry, too much racism and fascism and sexism.
*****
Smol’s daytime schedule seemed to be shifting to dropping the third nap, which worked out a bit better in giving us longer stretches at night. We were trying to go 3 hours between naps, it worked for a couple of days, then they reverted again to shorter naps during the day and needing three again. Which in turn meant less sleep at night and waking up at 5 am again. That’s truly what the doctor ordered! /sarcasm
PiC speculated that it’s to do with their brain development. They do seem to be trying to achieve another level of mobility which I’m absolutely not ready for.
***** (more…)
August 30, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 162: We’re still cautious about in person school but we’re also well aware that unlike our friends across the country, our district has at least some of the most needed mitigation strategies in place: universal mask mandate, they claim to have updated all the ventilation and to have an air purifier in every room (the latter two I want to see with my own eyes before believing it).
Naturally, Republican Californians had to try to make this darkest timeline even worse with the ridiculous recall election. Newsom is not the best governor ever but at least we have mask mandates. Not a single one of the candidates on the ballot inspires anything but disdain or disgust.
*****
I’m on Day 4 of not getting good sleep. At least last night was just interrupted sleep but not as pain-riddled as the previous 3 days. I had finally escalated to the heavy duty pain meds and that helped enough so that when I slept, it was relatively decent. But not nearly enough. I can usually function on moderate sleep deprivation. It gets tougher when it hits high sleep deprivation like it has now. I took a long rest both Saturday and Sunday but clearly I need another rest today.
It makes me wonder if I should try caffeine but that’s not going to give me more energy. It’ll just stave off sleepiness, which isn’t the issue, so that doesn’t help anything. Right? That’s how caffeine works?
*****
Because just doing my own work at twice the speed anyone else would isn’t enough, I had staffers out today so I had to cover for them. I made a couple executive decisions: I’d take care of most of their stuff, within reason, most of my stuff, and bump the rest to tomorrow. And I’m taking a short rest today. I’m not going to kill myself for work. I’m not going to use up my last dregs of energy and then be a growling monster at my family because I’m clean out of patience. Priorities.
*****
Meanwhile, in Smolville, Smol Acrobat done lost their little infant sleeping mind. They were showing all the signs of sleepiness, including doing their yelling at me that they do when it’s naptime. I comply and go through the whole routine. Do they sleep? They do not. They holler for 55 minutes. We tried three times to resettle them, finally feeding them some more formula, before they finally passed out. I do not know what broke there but it was a whole lot of mess.
Year 2, Day 163: Boy, I thought the past few days were rough. They were. But then last night was the worst. I caught two hours of sleep, then was stuck awake for the next five because of painsomnia and anxiety. I’m guessing the fatigue is why I spent most of the work day (counted only as the time spent in front of the computer, not the time I was minding Smol) in a state of being poised for flight. I just wanted to run away screaming. Pandemic normal, right?
***** (more…)
August 23, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 155: Yesterday was such a bad day with JB that the funk has followed me into today. I just want to lay my head down and be left alone for hours. Naturally, I cannot. We have school drop-off, work, more work, Smol to take care of, more MORE work, Smol to settle down for a nap, work, school pick up, JB’s after school lessons that will stand in for some version of aftercare to schedule.
I don’t know if it’s tempting fate but I filled almost in the rest of the school year’s dates on our calendar for JB. Who knows if these dates will stand. But I will want to know them later and what better time to do that then when I’m stressed and looking for administrative mindless scutwork?
I did sort out their tutoring and Spanish scheduling too, so I was able to start booking those out for a few weeks. This gives me a (faux) sense of control over something. Look at me! Planning things!
*****
I finished our two direct aid projects for friends and did tell myself that I’m not allowed to pick up another project for at least 24 hours. Will I be able to do that? WE. SHALL. SEE.
*****
We donated to the Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay to support their refugee resettlement efforts. This situation in Afghanistan hits really close to home. Our family had to escape their homeland after the US withdrew their troops after the fall of Saigon. One uncle who worked with the CIA disappeared forever, leaving behind his wife and three kids. No one has seen or heard from him since 1975. Another uncle was thrown into jail for decades for fighting for the “wrong” side. Most of my family had to flee under cover of night, embarking on a dangerous journey they were lucky to survive.
People deserve a safe place to live and I think we have a moral responsibility to extend that safety (dubious though it may feel when I look around at how citizens of this country have behaved in recent years).
Year 2, Day 156: I am forcing myself to wait at least until tomorrow before starting up another project. I do have plenty of work to do, I just don’t want to do it and I am clearly using these projects to help me feel a tiny bit better about a world that I strongly resent and dislike.
I’m realizing that I’m simmering at a high amount of rage every day. I haven’t been in this emotional space for a long time and I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until this weekend when JB and I had the worst most terrible-parenting interaction I’ve ever had and it’s finally sunk in that I’m so overtaxed, so filled with anger at the world, that I have lost every reservoir of patience.
I had to meet someone that a loved one has been seeing for a while and it was immediate red flags and I just want to yell nooooo but they won’t listen so there’s no point. Having been their near-daily support for years through similar bad situations, it was so hard to watch what appears to be them walking down the same path again. I’m also furious with some family because GET YOUR SHOT AUGH. The refugee situation in Afghanistan pushes some very personal buttons, as my family including my generation, were refugees after a war. (more…)