August 8, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 136: 6:20 am, drat. The sleep is creeping in the wrong direction again.
*****
My return to work was a depressing crash landing into stressing about too much to do. It was less about the work and more about the volume of everything.
I have to: do all my work in a limited amount of time; mind Smol Acrobat most of the day before and after their ONE nap; help JB (who still has another several days home before school starts) with any tech arrangements needed for their tutoring refresher courses that I set up; follow up on the Lakota giving orders I placed.
I think the stress is compounded by my (near pathological) need to have everything tidied up and right and tight on my FIRST DAY back. That may be related to my need to depart on time when we travel, as well, which sets off no end of anxiety. I keep twisting myself up into knots trying to meet totally unreasonable standards. Huh. There’s a theme.
PiC and I are trying something new: not pushing ourselves to be all caught up on work in an unreasonable amount of time.
*****
I leaned into the inevitable inability to work after Smol’s nap, and took the kids out for a walk to the playground nearby. Sadly for every inch of my body, the nearest one was closed. I should have steered us home to the backyard but gave into the “try to be a better parent” impulse to give JB a proper play on a big play structure and urged Sera and Smol into this ill considered adventure. It was a huge pain getting Smol to cooperate and get there in the first place. I had regrets almost immediately. But after much coaxing and pushing and prodding, they conquered the promised playground. They also had fun playing in the dirt so I remind myself we didn’t have to go that far for entertainment.
***** (more…)
August 1, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 129: 730 am. Totally reasonable!
*****
Unfortunately, the wait list for private swim lessons at our local Y is closed. They don’t have enough instructors, and already have 120 families on their list. Sigh. I imagine that national staffing shortages will be a problem for a long time considering how many people have been ill with or died of COVID.
*****
PiC started the hunt for our family car again just to get a feel for the landscape. It’s bad. Waitlists are 12-18 months for new vehicles. Used cars are priced as high as new. Since when do we pay $55k before tax for a used vehicle?? We last paid an average of $10k for each car and we keep them for a decade or more.
Year 3, Day 130: Sadness. Our pediatrician is moving his practice out of town. We liked him a lot, he started his practice here when JB was born so he’s seen them, and now Smol Acrobat, since they were newborns. I hate changes like this.
*****
My maternal grandmother passed away. I had a lot of feelings. We haven’t spoken in years. Not even at my mom’s funeral since I didn’t even want that side of the family there after the week of shenanigans that my grandfather and aunts engaged in. They harassed me for a solid week and at the funeral itself.
On the one hand, I feel a familiar tug of “you SHOULD feel like you should go to the funeral.” But I don’t want to go. I don’t feel like I should go in spite of my feelings, either. What sense of duty I have doesn’t apply to them. I haven’t had a relationship with them for 20 years, what contact I DID have in those 20 years wasn’t good, and I don’t have respects to give, any desire to give the living any comfort over her passing, or desire to tolerate their inevitable sniping and gossip.
On the other hand, I’m still mad at them for being such selfish grasping people and I remember how much I wished they’d be family that I could be close to. I couldn’t, they’re just not capable of being considerate or kind. They’re mean and petty. I remember when I was 13, one aunt deliberately picked a fight with me when I put her shoes in our closet. On opening the door, I commented, man, our closet smells weird! She asked if I was saying her shoes smelled to which I replied, of course not! It’s our closet, I just noticed it smelled funny BEFORE I put your shoes in. It was like that before you got here. But she continued to pick pick pick trying to force me to admit I’d offended her somehow. It was so strange but very thematic.
It’s better to protect my time with the people who actually value us but I remember that when they first emigrated here, I had such high hopes of coming into more family to love. Alas.
Year 3, Day 131:
JB and I are having sobering conversations about unhoused people in the city and it’s hard to explain how much our government is failing its citizens. We shouldn’t have so many people in such terrible circumstances. We do the best we can to help but it’s hardly a drop in the bucket.
*****
We finally cleared out a space for Smol’s crib in the guest room. They would have been moved out ages ago but this is their main play room and I’ve lacked the motivation and energy to tackle that chore until now. I hope this is the thing that turns around their morning wakings.
*****
Parahawking looks so cool.
Year 3, Day 132:
TIL I have to throw out the old or excess candy behind everyone’s backs, including PiC’s. He usually doesn’t even eat candy! Why was he standing there picking through the bucket as if he was going to save these old things from doom? I hate adding to landfill but don’t know what to do with unwanted candy we’re gifted for the kids.
*****
Smol Acrobat is BIG into sharing food now. They insist on feeding us almost as much as we feed them, they want to split breads that I give them in half to share.
They are now consistently identifying eyes on other people. By poking them with their finger while enunciating “eyeeeee”.
*****
I watched the Wakanda Forever trailer and was sad all over again that Chadwick Boseman is gone.
Year 3, Day 133: Moving Smol Acrobat out of our room made such a difference! They’re still waking early but so far, since they don’t see us, they’re settling back down for another round of R&R. Dragging my feet on something that takes a huge amount of energy (clearing space for their crib) was just feeding the cycle of exhaustion.
*****
So many chores today. I unpacked and organized a huge pile of hand me downs, incorporating it into the existing supply of next size up hand, sorted out smaller things and excess things for donation and moved Smol’s clothes to their closet. All bedrooms here are now occupied and that feels really weird! I had a dream last night about discovering a new empty bedroom (with the unfortunate addition of my leech brother), maybe it was inspired by this sense of being crowded.
My office is still 75% intolerable but I’ve been steadily moving paper and trash out to their respective bins, which makes it feel like progress is happening.
My head is chock full of sewing projects, and I’m not ready to figure out the logistics or commit to the prep work. I’ll let them simmer for a bit longer. Today, I tackled a simpler project: a small hand me down photo album. It’s the kind that holds 100 (ish) 4×6 photos stacked in a book.
The insides were pristine but the cover was this nasty tapestry fabric with leather that will flake and fall apart when it ages. So I pulled out my scissors, Kraft glue, and special Hello Kitty fabric I’d indulgently bought a while back and covered the entire cover with fabric. It’s nothing I’d give as a real gift but JB will get a kick out of it. Maybe they can use it to store pictures or stickers. Now that I’ve said that… I wasn’t going to cover the second one but feel almost obligated to since they have a LOT of stickers and probably would love to have a sticker book. We’ll see. I’ll let them have this first and go from there.
July 25, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 122: 6 am. BLERGH.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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?
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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. 🤞😬
*****
Monday Morning Musing: why am I such a sucker for Hello Kitty stuff?
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.)
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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!
*****
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!
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
Gas is currently $6.06/gal. Just stating that for posterity’s sake.
*****
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?
*****
(more…)
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.
*****
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.
***** (more…)
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.
*****
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…)