November 29, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 253: JB and I have been spending bits of time together which we haven’t done since the pandemic started, it feels like. I’ve been helping them with their hair and reading to them some nights. I think my therapist was at least partially right that a major source of frustration and conflict we’ve been having lately has been related to their lack of connection to me which I was strongly feeling the lack of as well. These very little things that we’re doing together somehow seems to take the edge off our interactions that were frustrating me so much earlier.
Related, I think: They called me Mommy today for the first time in two years.
*****
A crowd of relatives dropped by for a visit and they brought GERMS with them. UGHHHH. I was immediately infected and so very very frustrated by this. We work so hard to protect Smol and me from germs right now, when we’re on a razor’s edge of being burnt out, and then this. It’s so inconsiderate. We’re immensely lucky to have help in this moment and I’m so mad that that’s squandered because people couldn’t have some consideration for my health. We were all masked of course but that and airflow still wasn’t enough to save me with more than one person running around sick and my not knowing that.
I’m very frustrated.
Year 2, Day 254: Still sick. Still frustrated.
I have a mega ton of work today and no energy with which to do it. So instead of getting it done early so I can enjoy Thanksgiving Thursday off with my family, I have to do the bare minimum today and conserve my energy to try to survive until Thursday. Awesome.
Still, my priorities are at least a little better in that I’m annoyed about the work but I’ve grown to a place where it doesn’t eat away at me (consciously, I still get the work nightmares at times) like it once would have. That’s a big change for me and I’m glad for the shift.
*****
Sometimes Smol is crawling across the floor and stops to do downward dog pose and I don’t know why they do it but it tickles me every single time.
I’m also tickled by their sudden flopping around thing they’re doing. It’s silly and funny.
Year 2, Day 255: We’re normally done with our grocery shopping by now but the disruptions to our pre Thanksgiving routine continued into today and I finally had to break away from work to just go and shop. It was another set of frustration but ultimately the best plan given everything that was going on.
I did put in some solid work time so that I could be set up to skip a day of work tomorrow and be ready to deal with stuff again on Friday at least part of the day no matter how little I want to go back to work. Definitely don’t wanna.
After three almost uninterrupted hours of work, I emerged from my cocoon to play with the kids a bit before we finally wrangled some leftovers for dinner. Our meal times have been all over the place lately and I just wasn’t hungry from still feeling sick anyway so I just grazed.
Year 2, Day 256: As we slowly started our day, PiC mentioned that an old friend is back in town. Not a particularly close friend but one that goes back several years. Normally it’d be fun to have an impromptu meet up with them but the timing overlaps with my person’s time here which has been well and truly disrupted beyond all reason so I firmly put the kibosh on this new development. I like them but no. I may not have set plans for the day but what I do have is a firm conviction that I am absolutely not open to making it work with anyone else for any reason, period. I’m done. While he doesn’t typically argue when I feel this strongly about it, and rightfully so, I normally would have guilted myself into trying to make it happen for his sake. They’re not here that often and I like him getting to see his people when possible. And especially after our being isolated for so long, it’s harder on him than it is on me. He wants to see people. I only want to see very specific people and anyone outside that list is exhausting right now.
So not this time. My person’s time is my priority and that’s that.
*****
We planned to start cooking at 130 but really started at 12. I’m glad because it worked out to a super early midday dinner at 4 pm when Smol was asleep. We were able to enjoy our hard earned sit-down meal at a leisurely pace without the squawking demands of a fussy eater. After they woke up, they got to have their own sit-down with our leftovers, and of course they squeaked and squawked and did their thing but it didn’t matter because we all had happy full bellies and had an hour to rest.
We still have entirely too many leftovers, of course, but not of turkey this year.
We decided to try something new and it’s a good thing we did because we ran out of fridge and freezer space four days ago. I’m not sure where we’d have fit a turkey.
*****
Oh also yesterday, JB and I had a few long conversations about the origin of this holiday. We told them that it actually involves a whole lot less goodwill towards the First Nations people than the stories say and a whole lot more bad behavior on the part of the colonists. For the sake of being age appropriate, we didn’t get into the genocide part yet, we can do that later.
They were appalled that their teacher didn’t tell them the whole truth. I explained that there are probably a lot of reasons for the half “truth” but that they also shouldn’t march in there and call the teacher a liar over it. (Not in first grade at least…) Twitter found this whole thing very amusing.
Year 2, Day 257: Definitely had to work but didn’t wanna today. I did the bare minimum and skipped out before 5 (barely). This has been a most unsatisfying week compared to what I had envisioned but I was super grateful to have my person here all this time. The kids adore them utterly and it’s been a real balm for the soul to have someone who loves the kids and who I love be here with us.
We even took a couple hours (across two days) to watch Shang-Chi. Note: I will watch anything with Michelle Yeoh, Gina Torres, or Ming Na in it. But I truly cannot remember when we adults last had a movie night. Years, plural, minimum. On the second day, JB excused themselves on the grounds that live action movies sometimes scare them and they believe it’s real when watching. We told them they’re never obliged to watch anything they don’t want to, but having a screaming tantrum about it (like they kind of did on the first day) is completely inappropriate. Just leave the room!! So they did. They did a solo art activity session for 1.5 hours and enjoyed themselves heartily. Isn’t that so much better than tormenting yourself or having a tantrum?
The first day behavior is clearly a mimicry of a cousin whose behavior I cannot stand. We have to “deprogram” JB from those absorbed behaviors every flipping time we see them and it’s such a pain. More on this later.
So grateful for the weekend!!
:: If you celebrated or had some time off, how was your long/holiday weekend?
November 22, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 246: Smol slept in! Which was both nice for us and also disruptive because when they get up early, their first nap works well with the school dropoff and work start routine. Ah well. After dropoff, I took the prenap hour with them: a bottle, some time to wreak havoc and pull everything out of baskets several times, then a game of chase around the playmat. Cackles galore!
We got almost two hours of work in, during which I tested out an anti-anxiety exercise of writing out all the things plaguing my brain right now and separating the stuff I cannot control from the list of things I can control. The latter list is so short. The former list, so long.
*****
I hate hiring.
*****
I came pretty close to finishing my day’s work by 8 pm at which point I just needed to take another break (having taken one for dinner). Unfortunately almost wasn’t good enough and since PiC has a massive day of meetings tomorrow, I went back to finish up and try to make some headway into tomorrow’s work since I’ll be primary caretaker for half the day. Upon crawling into bed, I contemplated how profound a difference it is between being in pain and not being in pain. Pain meds rarely work well for me but on the rare occasions that they do, I feel that absence of pain so intensely. My doctor refers to me as “not a drugs person” but if pain meds were that effective every time? I’d be on them in a heartbeat. It also makes me marvel about how people who don’t live in pain every waking and most sleeping moments must take that for granted.
Year 2, Day 247: I’d forgotten how terrible it feels when my pain meds work on the physical pain and simultaneously block my brain from falling asleep. I got three hours of sleep last night. 😠By 10 am, my muscles were on fire and my brain had gone all spinny. I took a short “break”, set myself up on the bed with a huge stack of pillows for about 5 minutes before Smol woke up and thank goodness for that reset. I wish I’d thought to do that sooner. I was forcing myself to power through because there’s too much to do in too little time, of course.
(more…)
November 15, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 239: This morning was SUCH a struggle to get my brain working. Anxiety driven? Maybe. Case of the Mondays? Probably more that. My anxiebees were quiet for a lot of the day.
We got the news that there will be a daycare slot opening for Smol to attend part time next year. I don’t think the under-5 group will have a vaccine by then which of course sends my worries up again.
*****
The Dino Dash: When they are in the mood for it, we toss Smol on the bed and they turn into a little triceratops on the attack. They crawl madly cackling at you or towards the edge of the bed and we have to intercept them before they go flying off the edge. They clash into our bodies and get flipped on their back or proactively turn around and race the other way and you have to dash wildly around the bed to get to the other side before they do. It’s good cardio!
*****
We snagged a vaccine appointment for JB later this month. I will be stalking the site for any earlier vaccinations. I’m also wondering where the under-5 group trials are. Best I can find is that Pfizer’s trials are in process (Sept 28 article) and Moderna just started their trials. I suppose it’ll be too much to hope for approval of an under-5 vaccine before the new year.
*****
4:30 looked like 8:30 outside, gloomy and dark, with the light rains passing through.
The storm inside was much worse than the drizzle outside: JB was all kinds of frustration and acting out for a while after school. They were sent to their room for a good long while, surprisingly they started their homework without being told, and emerged for their Spanish lesson.
*****
I had cooked dinner at 1 pm because I had ingredients on hand, it was my turn to mind Smol so I couldn’t work anyway, and it was really nice to have dinner already made by the late afternoon.
We were able to work as late as 530 and just get the warmed up dinner on the table in a matter of minutes. I would really like to have more dinners just ready to go.
Year 2, Day 240: My fatigue was notably odd yesterday. Less “someone siphoned my tank again” and more “I could use several breaks”. I wonder if it’s because I forced myself to take a long midday walk? Today it’s back closer to the normal: anchors attached to every limb and heaved overboard. Not great. I took a walk this morning. It’s weird.
*****
Speaking of weird, our reverse water thingamadoo has been putting out a steadily decreasing amount of water for a week. What’s going on?? We have been staring at the slowing trickle thinking “we gotta fix this!” but today’s the first day I’ve actually managed to Google some troubleshooting tips. Time, energy, where do we get some extra??
I tried sugar, that didn’t go so well.
*****
JB got themselves up and ready on time this morning. I got very tired of chivvying them along every morning for the past few weeks so I told them clearly:not to lay abed more than 5 minutes after their alarm on weekdays. I think about how incredibly lucky we are with this.
A, they like (playing at) school. B, after the clear instruction they’ve gotten up on time every day since. It’s taken a few days to get the rest of the routine back in track but that was a huge help to getting us started in the first place. I never had an alarm when I was younger, I was just expected to get up on time and not surprisingly, I never could. I was also plagued by nightmares every night which helped nothing of course. But I’m glad our mornings have shifted in the right direction again.
*****
JB told us they didn’t want to enter an art contest because they might not win. Then they said that if they did enter and didn’t win, they’d never enter again.
Now, I don’t think contests are important but I’m appalled at the developing underlying all or nothing notion: that if you can’t win, you might as well not try. I shared my “don’t reject yourself” philosophy while withholding a screech of WHAT ON EARTH, explaining that even if you don’t always win, you definitely won’t if you won’t even participate and also you’ll miss out on a lot of fun and learning in life with an all or nothing mentality so we’re going to practice something different.
They went on to whine about other things so I have no idea if they actually heard me, if it made any difference, or if they were just being a contrary cuss for attention.
*****
I took all the kids out for an unexpectedly long (in time, not in distance) walk in the evening so that PiC could get some uninterrupted work done. I’d intended only to go for about 20 minutes but we were out for an hour because we kept running into people. JB ran into a past schoolmate and had to stop to say hi. I never had the experience of going to the school in my neighborhood and seeing my friends at school around my home. It’s a bizarre feeling and sometimes I don’t like it because I feel hemmed in and vulnerable. Not sure what the vulnerability is about specifically, just that sometimes I want the shield of anonymity up. There’s an impulse/reaction to interrogate at a later date.
Year 2, Day 241: Our reverse osmosis system is totally down today, boooo! PiC has been trying to troubleshoot it, but no joy, alas. We’re calling in professional help.
He did fix the temperature issue in our shower so that’s a huge help. We still need to deal with our broken eaves and gutters and replace our hot water heater but that’s going to have to wait for …. either desperate times or energy, whichever comes first. I think we all know which it’ll be. Actually that leads me to….
*****
Happy(?) news: My doc came up with a medication recommendation for me to try out and see if it helps at all with the overwhelming fatigue on a couple days a week. I’m briefed on the side effects so I’m crossing my fingers that on very low dose and an as-needed basis only, the side effects will be minimal. I also have a full battery of bloodwork on order to see if there are any medical issues we can address. Obviously I have medical issues, I just got the package of ailments without solutions or treatments.
*****
Smol’s naps were pretty terrible today. That by itself isn’t so bad but after yesterday’s prolonged outing, my body was on fire with fatigue by 1:30 because I needed a lot more sitting down time before baby chasing time. PiC took over and I slumped at my desk for a few hours while muscles went back to some semblance of baseline tolerable pain. Not awesome.
Year 2, Day 242: I’m on my second to last set of Invisalign aligners. I’m a month away from having to make the decision about whether I am happy with the new alignment. At my recent check up, I was uncomfortable with being so close because while the alignment of my teeth has been corrected, my bite is uncomfortable in this configuration. Well it feels like this set of aligners is tackling that but OMG OWCHHHH. It feels like every tooth is screaming.
Also I was told that I’d have to wear my retainers full time for 12 months (preferable 18 months) to ensure they don’t move again *cries*
*****
We had a last minute lunch guest. A dear friend we don’t see often enough retired recently and has been traveling the world having adventures. She realized that she has been very responsible with her money, enough so she has enough for years and years, and very few needs and responsibilities so she can afford to go live her life and enjoy it instead of working.
I’m so happy for her and am so eager to join her in the post-work life stage. We joked that even if I didn’t have a dozen things I wanted to do, I’d be happy to retire to enjoy a time of good food, good rest and good dogs, without work.
PiC and I both grumbled that we don’t want to work tomorrow and / or anymore and he asked me if we could retire now.
Sure but it’ll be a short retirement! I wish I (and my job) were the sabbatical type but I’m more of a push hard for the final goal and don’t look back type. Since sabbaticals aren’t possible in my line of work anyway, I have to embrace the means that are available to me.
Seeing my friend was a boost to the soul. I missed her and miss my other dear friends so much.
Year 2, Day 243: I didn’t have the day off work for Veterans Day but the day after a school day off is still disorienting.
*****
Every time I think about the climate and how we have all kinds of possible solutions and it feels like there is zero effective political will to do anything about this before our time runs out, I catch myself holding my breath. Symbolic unconscious reaction, I suppose, for a world that may all too soon be uninhabitable for humans of today. I don’t know how to fight the existential dread that all of this is for naught because we cannot, as a planet of people, get our acts together on a global and nation-sized scale. This can’t be about individual action anymore, and that realization that we’re depending on people leading countries to do something while it seems like the world is being taken over by right wing fascists… I don’t know how anyone functions like we’ll have a tomorrow.
It’s getting harder for me not to feel like hiding under the bed. For a multitude of reasons, certainly, but this one’s a biggie.
:: How are you coping this week? How do you feel about contests and doing things for the sake of winning vs for the sake of enjoying them?
November 9, 2021
I just did the math and I’ve been blogging in these here parts for 15 years and a few months!
No wonder it felt like time for a name change or something to freshen up the place a little bit.
In 2006, I started this blog because I was desperate to talk about money with someone. No one in my cohort was concerned about money. They all had housing and college paid for or they were confident about taking out massive loans. I was the odd one out: living at home and paying all the bills, and working at an incredibly toxic workplace to do it. It sucked. I’d also been living with chronic pain for over ten years so by this point, my health outlook was bleak. My assumption was I’d be dead or crippled by 2012. Thankfully, I had access to new exciting financial information at Fatwallet and the determination to be strategic about my remaining functional years. When I realized my bosses were rusty nails and gangrene terrible, following the shared wisdom of my elders here in PF blogging, I plotted my career course and took what I could from this job to the next: experience doing everything whether or not it was my job, negotiating my face off to move my base salary up so that I’d have a better stepping stone to the next phase, taking courses in management and reading all the Ask A Manager I could hold. My goal was to grow enough at this job to give myself some real escape velocity, and pay down all my parents’ debt and get them set up for retirement, then get the heck out of Dodge. I was especially concerned about my body’s expiration date. (more…)
November 8, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 232: So the good news? Smol slept in until 730 am!!
The bad news is I woke up every hour because of internal temperature fluctuations, I’d wake up in a sweat, then wake up freezing, and then leapt out of bed at 1 am startled because my subconscious brain was positive that something was wrong. By 9 am, my entire body was fatigued beyond belief.
But Smol’s sleeping in was so much appreciated.
*****
JB was so wiped from the day before that they slept in until 930 which was both surprising and appreciated too, just in a different way.
They are grumpy that there’s laundry to put away again. Yeah shocking how with two kids there’s always some laundry to put away, isn’t it? Also shocking there’s always food to be cooked and dishes to wash as well. Life requirements, so tiresome!
*****
Light rain all day. I’m glad for the gentleness, we need the rain but the heavy rains bring worries of floods.
*****
My doctor’s office wanted me to take the 13 question questionnaire meant to ferret out depression and can I ask if there’s anyone who isn’t feeling most of those things every day? As an example: Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless; Little interest or pleasure in doing things; Feeling tired or having little energy; Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge. Yes, yes, yes, and yes…. who isn’t??
I function but of course I feel all these things every single day.
A friend pointed out that it’s the people who ignore the pandemic and just live like nothing’s changed who aren’t experiencing this. They’re probably right and that ticks me off too. This could have been so much better, and we could be back to some semblance of a safer normal, if it weren’t for people acting like we aren’t in a deadly pandemic.
I can’t help but feel bitter that the tide shifted from alarm and attention to the “fuck them, I’m fine” attitude the moment the data started showing that this affects PoC more than white people. And it’s not like they were hiding it. They just came right out and said so.
***** (more…)
November 1, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 225: My Anxiebees were incredibly active today, slowing down my brain processing by a factor of ten, and inspired a new design (women’s V-neck; standard tee). I stopped to make those to burn off some of that oppressive worry / stress / brain fog / creeping depression / fiddly twitchy feelings.
*****
I had Royal Pains on in the background while I was working and Henry Winkler’s character — can I just say, MAJOR FLASHBACKS. That scene when he and Evan talk about his taking all their money: “You’re gonna get your money back, day or two, week tops.”
That exact same expression on his face is what was on my dad’s face when I was following up with him on getting the money back from the loan I’d made. That lying manipulative asshole expression of “trust me, I’m your father” when he really meant “trust me, I need to take more of your money.” That shook me pretty hard. I still can’t deal with these flashbacks. I think about how angry Hank was, and how angry I am, and how that tracks as we were the responsible siblings. How easily Evan forgave him, I still can’t wrap my head around. Maybe it’s because he had a protector, where neither the Hank character or I did.
*****
I finally asked Michael’s if they were still going to ship my fabric. They confirmed that the fabric was still in stock, and that their warehouse was just ten days behind. I started to ask if it was ten days in addition to the two weeks they’re already late but decided that doesn’t matter. It’ll get here when it gets here, it definitely won’t be in time for me to get through my holiday projects. They sent a $10 gift card for my trouble so that was nice since there’s nothing they can do to hurry along the shipment. I guess it’s a good thing I bought that back up fabric after all. Now I just need to learn to sew on the machine! 😬
***** (more…)
October 25, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 218: Huzzah!! Smol made it through the night to 6 am! A painful hour but so much better than 3 and 4 and 5. The combination of overnight diapers and a touch of sleep training the first night they woke automatically predawn without real cause, no leaks!, and we’re back to square two with their sleep. Thank goodness. Zero (1-4 wake ups every night) really sucked. Hard as it was to crawl out into the dark cold to fetch Smol, they were so HAPPY, babbling and chatting away to their little plushie friends, it was hard not to be infected by their mood.
For my part, the flu shot we got over the weekend is kicking my behind up and down the corridors. I was fatigue-aching from head to toe, not unlike a pain flare tbh, yesterday and today my whole left side aches in a different way. Like it’s inflamed and angry. Here’s hoping this is actually producing an immune response and not just torturing me.
*****
It feels like I blinked and here we are deep into fall and Halloween just around the corner. I’m glad that I thought ahead enough that JB and Smol already their costumes for whatever small activity we do with their little friends, and I’m trying to use this time to get equally prepared for Turkey Holiday and the winter holidays. I’d rather put in the hard work early so I can enjoy what I feel like enjoying come the time. Half the winter presents are done but there are some I forgot to put on the list or haven’t been able to come up with yet.
****
Yesterday I’d tackled the problem of all the kids’ clothes in too small (to give away) and too big (store sensibly for future use). Today I tackled the problem of boxes of uncurated hand me downs from friends clearing out their old stuff and figuring JB would probably like it all. They would, they are a budding pack rat, but I went through to sort things to keep, donate, or recycle. It was spiritually freeing to clear up the post-hurricane-looking closet and floor. This was during my long childminding break from work and it was deeply satisfying to get most of the way through.
***** (more…)