About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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September 23, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 159: COVID vaccines are being administered nearby but they still don’t have them for 5 and under so I’m waiting til Smol Acrobat can get vaccinated so the kids can go together for moral support. PiC and I have to remember to do ours separately so we don’t have a simultaneous crash and burn like we did last fall. It was totally unexpected. We’d been relatively ok after all the prior boosters/vax after the very first round so we let our guard down for the Fall 2023 shots. JB was a champ at covering for us but I don’t want them to have to do that again.
Smol Acrobat has been sick for a few days and they finally got me this weekend. It appears to be the standard preschooler congestion/fatigue/cough/ICK virus that circulates every other week, but I tested both of us today and we’re currently negative on COVID. I’ll test again in a few. I had the luxury of being able to rest half the day Sunday because PiC took the kids, but there’s no rest on weekdays between work and school drop off and pick up and activities.
Year 5, Day 160: Operating at about 30% today, having gone to bed early but unable to sleep for physical discomfort and then unable to rest for the psychological warfare my subconscious is waging against the nightmares. PiC heard me shout in my sleep last night, I remember that waking me up too, because of some vampire-ish type of nightmare.
With 9 direct reports, someone always needs something. It gets unwieldy when it’s three somebodies all needing something at the same time. It’s not all handholding, though sometimes (and more lately because of THINGS and REASONS) it is that too. Ultimately I’ve got to make some changes in my department. I don’t love them but reality has set in, especially as at least one person is in crisis and needs me to be really present for them in a way that isn’t sustainable in the long-term the way I’m overloaded now. My hope is that we can support them through the crisis and in the meantime I will be restructuring enough so that I am prepared for future needs. I wish I could have had real support when I was grieving my mom’s sudden death or overwhelmed with my pain and fatigue issues, even if I didn’t know I needed it or how to ask for it, so I’m committed to providing it here.
Year 5, Day 161: I’m still feeling under the weather but compared to how I would normally be feeling three days into any virus (steamrollered), this isn’t nearly as bad (very mild congestion, continued fatigue). That first day of rest must have made a real difference because that’s the only difference between the last time I got sick and this. My system is overreacting to the virus today with absolutely delightful (not) mouth sores despite the antivirals, though, and that’s making eating a real trial.
I powered through so much work today in an attempt to keep the decks clear for a shorter day on Friday. We’re going to get the kids their passports and then I get to test out the online passport renewal process that just opened today for myself. Tiny squee of excitement.
Year 5, Day 162: Trainer time! This is the third workout of the week and despite the viral things going on with me, I decided to push my limits a bit. The trainer usually gives me a range, say 3-8 lateral raises, or 2-5 pushups (modified since my wrists can’t handle that pressure). I aim for the middle of the range most of the time, hover at the bottom of the range on bad days. Since good days are far and few between, I figured that a not-bad day is good enough for attempting this. Plus I was emotionally disregulated like WOW this afternoon and the challenge felt like a good way to shake my brain loose of the crankiness. I did 20 modified pushups and 32 lateral raises with light weights. Will I be able to lift my arms tomorrow? NO ONE KNOWS.
Year 5, Day 162: Oops, my updates for this day and Friday were lost to the ether! I won’t fully attempt to recreate them but just the most relevant bits: YES I was able to lift my arms today and it wasn’t a big deal which conversely was a big deal because that’s really cool. I am getting a bit stronger and not getting punished for trying to work out again! That’s such a huge thing.
Year 5, Day 163: This was both a busy day and a good day in that I cleared a lot of work in not a lot of time, so PiC and I were able to have lunch together. We haven’t done that in a very long time. The bad part was we both ate too much and nearly succumbed to food coma! 😀 In the end, we made it through the worst of the comas and finished out the week.
September 20, 2024
1. This week I learned: “Thalassophobia is the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water, such as the ocean, seas, or lakes.” *Raises both hands* that’s very much me!
2. Wallaby is such a funny word to say.
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September 18, 2024
Life with JB
Our friends with kids between ages 7-11 who go to a different school were telling us their sixth grader was the last one in the class to get a cell phone. That even kids as young as second graders already have Apple Watches and phone and all the devices. So even though they didn’t plan to do soon, they gave their 6th grader a cell phone and it’s already caused a lot of problems.
Also, maybe related maybe not, or maybe it’s just a compounded thing, they’re now really struggling with the kid’s attitude problem. It feels like that switch to mega-attitude happened overnight, they said. I’m not so sure about that. We last spent time with them two years ago and the kid was pretty flipping disrespectful then. Here’s hoping it’s just a phase but I honestly do wonder how unhealthy it is for kids as young as second grade to have cell phones. I suspect there were kids in JB’s class who either had a phone or access to one earlier, one of them was pestering them last year about sharing their number for messaging. JB’s allowed to use my phone to text people we already know but I think it’s way too early to let them use messaging things unsupervised. Of course I’m not quite sure when is the right time. Only pagers were around when I was a teen, cell phones weren’t common until college. Developmentally THAT felt like probably the less damaging timing but that’s not realistic for this generation.
They definitely want a phone but we still have to have a few more talks about conduct and safety and so on. Heck, before we put a phone in their hands, we need to have the puberty talks.
Life with Smol Acrobat
More chores: I’d taught Smol Acrobat to hang up their clothes in May, once, and then we never got back around to it. But when we did, they remembered how! I was so proud.
They’ve been helping put away clean laundry more often. JB obviously also loves this development. Smol Acrobat is on duty for: toilet paper refilling, hanging up their own clothes, putting away the utensils, and running deliveries from room to room. They also help with the actual laundry if they’re around but I do it during the week when I’m alone most of the time. That’s not too shabby for a three year old. I’ll have to think of what’s next for JB to do as Smol Acrobat starts to take over their responsibilities. Putting the bins out and taking them back in might have to go on the official roster.
Joint birthday parties have become a thing this year for the pre-preschool set. Daycare parents are combining their birthday parties not just for siblings but for classmates. I don’t think I get along with anyone enough to want to co-plan a birthday party.
Every night, PiC asks JB about their day. Smol Acrobat usually goofs off or talks to me during this ritual. Suddenly this month, they wanted in on this. “I want to talk about my day!” And then they reel off several disjointed phrases that may or may not eventually make sense. At first none of them did but now they’re getting better with practice. They’re a bit of a late bloomer verbally so this is rather charming.
Pupdate
I should remove this section but I can’t quite bring myself to yet. Realistically we’re at least a year away from being ready to add the heavy lifting of adding a rescue pup to the family. But in my dog deprivation, I started browsing rescue listings and that helped for a minute, but only a minute. Then it turned into sadness again. Sadness for the dogs and sadness that I know I’m not ready yet.
But borrowing our neighbors’ dogs has been a decent treat. I appreciate them trusting me with their pups for short playdates.
Precious Moments
I gave Smol a small art kit for a longer car ride. Just some scratch paper and a little Ziploc of mismatched crayons. “Whoa! Dat’s impwessive!”
*****
Crossing the bridge, JB called their attention to the water around us: Das beeeoootifooo!
*****
JB: hey mom! I have a riddle. Well, not a riddle. It’s a question I know the answer to. What do mice use for swords? It’s not a joke.
*****
Smol Acrobat just said very aggressively: I making a cookie for YOU because you were WISTENING!
*****
JB dressed Smol Acrobat up in their old Batman costume and taught them to growl: I’m Batman!
Yeah, ok.
Then they instructed them to growl: I have nine limbs!
Wait what?
*****
JB, angrily: Homework is the WORST!
Smol Acrobat: No! I’M the worstest!
Anything to be part of things with JB, I guess.
*****
Smol Acrobat: I’m angwy!
Me: that’s so sad. You have chores.
SA: no, I have no hands!
Me: ok, then do them with your feet.
SA: …..
September 16, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 152: Reminding myself as much as I legitimately hate almost everything about my job right now, I hate self inflicted injury and being poor more. So don’t quit don’t quit don’t quit. All the department heads are frustrated, and demotivated, right now, and I can’t fix it for myself or for them. I didn’t cause it and it’s not my business to fix, but it’s so EXTRA frustrating that we’re all so unhappy. (Is the strength of my quittiness correlated with my lack of dog? Very possibly.)
Some of the fruits of my shopping spree have started to come in. The Vogmask is a nice alternative mask to have on hand. I’m still primarily wearing the flo-mask but there are times that it isn’t suitable. The IKEA delivery finally arrived so I organized the utensils drawer that has been annoying me for almost a decade. It’s really quite satisfying to see it nice and neat. It led to bagging up a lot of utensils for donation too, which is a good thing to do regularly. I’ll do a more thorough sweep of the plastic utensils that accumulate over time later this week.
Trainer time: this is the start of Week Six! I haven’t been able to do more than three consecutive workouts in more than 20 years and I have missed that so much. I’m not feeling any stronger yet, it’s much too soon for that, but I’m feeling that challenged feeling of striving for something harder than I can do right now without the usual getting knocked on my fibro/CFS ass follow-up and that’s really something. Week SIX. So planks are still harder than they have any right to be, but I’m enjoying the assumption that I will keep doing this and therefore eventually get stronger. The modified pushups and the lateral raises are still very satisfying.
Year 5, Day 153: My goodness the weather has turned. It’s viciously hot in most places but firmly turning into fall here. The heater went on this morning for a spell, I’ve been bumming around in sweatpants instead of shorts. The gloom was so close in that the curtains had to be drawn around 6 pm. I don’t mind exactly, it’s just that weird feeling of living in the shift. But also weather in general is just strange these days. Just last week we rode out a heat wave.
PiC had picked up a precooked Irish stew from Costco and it was perfect for tonight. Smol Acrobat was a bit of a butt about the potatoes but otherwise everyone else was happy with mopping up thick gravy with their carb of choice and the very filling carrots, potatoes and generous meat chunks. It’s probably just cheaper to buy this than to make it from scratch. It’s certainly easier!
Year 5, Day 153: Every morning, when I realize it’s not a “kid activities at the end of the day” I heave a sigh of relief. I’m so relieved that today is one of those. I have a list of things for JB to do when they get home and that’ll buy me a few hours of peace while they tootle around the house.
About five(?) years ago I had a massive allergy attack seeming bout of ridiculously obnoxiously persistent itching. My scalp was a mess. My hands and feet would sprout rash like patterns randomly. Allergy tests revealed no answers so the allergist advised me to stay on a very low dose of antihistamine daily ongoing once all the itching calmed down from the higher dose. A few months ago, having had no flare ups in years, I idly wondered if it had finally settled down enough that I could stop taking them but waved the question away. Long story long: I unintentionally forgot my antihistamine four nights in a row last week because I refilled my pill boxes incompletely and the answer is NOPE. I cannot stop taking them! It’s now been five+ days of non-stop itching even with 20 mg of antihistamine daily. What a terrible unforced error.
The California fire season feels like it’s year round nearly. There are three major fires that I’m aware of right now and at least one of them has forced evacuations of people I know. It was touch and go for the second group / fire but they said the evac orders were cancelled.
Yipes! I forgot it was still a trainer day until 10 pm. I got out of bed to finish the second half of my exercises. I wonder what the problem is with my brain. Originally to avoid setting off the fatigue and pain, we decided on an every other day schedule. The day immediately after I do a workout, I wish it was a workout day again. But the day after that, I forget that it’s a training day. This is consistent whether it’s a weekday or weekend. Maybe I should try four days in a row, ride the momentum? Or maybe two days, skip a day, then two days.
Year 5, Day 155: My Corelle order arrived! I’m a little iffy on the larger serving bowls we bought, they’re much bigger than I envisioned and where am I going to store them? But I am delighted with the little dip bowls and appetizer plates (my picks). Our prior set of dip bowls are down to 3 survivors out of …. 8? maybe? I remember the first one I broke about 8 years ago. Then I broke two more microwaving butter in them. The other 2 were someone else’s fault. The new little bowls are both microwave and dishwasher safe they are adequately protected from me. Not if I drop them, though, RIP first bowl. Originally I’d been yearning for a set of metal dip bowls – it’d take some real doing to break those! Sadly, the only set of metal bowls I liked was out of stock. Happily, Corelle came along with a 40% off Labor Day sale and that brought the price point down to a much more palatable range.
This also got me thinking about how it must be so American to think of holidays synonymously with sales. Do other countries do that nearly as much as we do? Surely not?
Also! I finally did my passport pictures! I have no idea if it’s any good, I can only hope. While I was at it, I did pictures for the kids and printed all that out as well to get moving on their passport applications. JB’s has expired and Smol Acrobat hasn’t had one yet so it’s time if we plan to try any international travel in the next few years. The State department claims that Oct-Dec is their slow period (low volume), let’s test that claim because I know of some people’s applications taking 6-12 months in the past year.
Year 5, Day 156: Oh my stars and garters, to quote the good Doctor Hank McCoy. It’s been a WEEK.
Lots of mutual aid this week. Friends with medical problems, cash crunches of the two digit to four digit varieties, evacuating the SoCal fires, Diane Duane’s book sale, and more. Also getting called on at the last minute to help a high schooler edit some writing. Once an English major, always an English major?
Nightmares every night leave me wrung out and exhausted by morning. Complaining about it at Bluesky caught the attention of someone with similar problems and they dropped me a line letting me know about a medication they’ve used to great effect for eliminating the nightmares. I immediately scheduled an appointment to talk to my doctor about it.
At work, a few small things slowed down just enough for me to catch my breath for a second, then I was pummeled with more personnel problems. It’s of the unfortunate event variety, not a performance issue, but I am going to fight to support and keep someone through a tough personal time. It’s going to land hard on my team but I will find a way to make it work. That’s the right thing to do. There are moments, especially when I hit the 10 pm still at my desk mark, when I wish I was willing to be mediocre at my job. I can draw some lines but that one, I can’t let go.
September 13, 2024
1. Diane Duane, author of the Young Wizards series that I started to read to JB briefly (and they are great, I’ve just been too tired to keep reading aloud), is in an unfortunate rent situation so they’re selling bundles of her ebooks at a discount.
I’m buying an extra set for any reader who’s interested, leave me a comment (with an email address!) if that’s you! (bethh?)
2. I had a doggy playdate! Throwing a ball for her for almost 80 minutes was too much, though. It needs to be less than an hour.
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September 9, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 145: I had vague notions of going somewhere with the family today, maybe a BART adventure to … I dunno. And with that stellar planning, instead I:
- Finally replaced the older elastic on JB’s school masks. Fresh elastic! Better protection!
- Finally ran that load of laundry I’d been planning to do since Wednesday. After helping me put an extra large load of wash into the washer, Smol Acrobat left the garage saying: dat’s enough for today. I should have taken that as a suggestion.
- Inspected my plants and planted several more snap peas in hopes they will crowd around the one plant that’s set apart from the others and puny in its solitude.
- Discovered that the onions I left in the ground months ago are sprouting new greens, as are the garlic cloves I lazily stuck in the soil and barely covered up. Low effort gardening win!
- PiC was struggling with patching a hole in Smol Acrobat’s bike tire so I started weeding, a thing the kids often like to “help” with, and ended up pulling so many weeds. And yet that wasn’t even half of them. Pah.
Prescription for poor judgement/overly ambitious chore tackling: Acetaminophen AND ibuprofen, hot shower, heating pad, a ton of water and a liedown.
Year 5, Day 146: I’m so sore today.
Our Vogmasks arrived! Finally. Happily, everyone’s sizes were correct so I may buy a full set to leave in the car. Inevitably someone will forget their mask at a bad time: they’re all in the wash or the backups are in the other backpack or bag, whatever. We carry them with us almost all the time, it’s that 1-2% of the time when you’re in a rush and didn’t realize you’d set your mask down for a minute and didn’t pick it up again.
JB wanted to beg off self defense today, offering to trade much house cleaning if they were allowed to skip. I really wanted to skip too but they’d missed last week already, plus a bunch over the summer, so I had to put my foot down for both of us. They were disappointed but didn’t complain. I had to lug work along and keep on working there, annoyingly, but still ended my workday at 10 pm. Grumble.
I took a break to make a big batch of spaghetti carbonara for dinner. This was appreciated by everyone but Smol Acrobat who complained: I wike de bacon and de gween beans but I don’t wike da pasta.
I knew they would be the objector but not to what, exactly. It might be the pasta shape. They’re used to ravioli and tortellini and lasagna, I can’t remember the last time we had a long pasta.
Year 5, Day 147: I don’t use TikTok but by golly are there so many cautionary tales about not being such a ???? that you believe everything influencers say to do. The latest is particularly relevant to this blog: “a viral glitch” to deposit a bad check and withdraw cash from that bad check when the bank makes it available immediately. That’s both fraud (knowingly depositing a bad check) and all kinds of setting yourself up for disaster. Have these people never been hit with an overdraft charge? Have they never seen how a single charge, if you don’t have that $30+ plus the money you overdrafted by, snowballs into months and years of financial chaos? It gives me hives just thinking about accidental overdrafts over the years that happened because my checking account was still a delicate ecosystem where being even two pennies off, or having two checks cashed in the wrong order, would set off an overdraft and chain reaction of panic as other bills came due and were processed. Luckily for me, I monitored that stuff obsessively and tweaked my system until I’d built up enough of a cushion that it could withstand any transaction going through in any order. But to be doing this on purpose with money you don’t have?? Noooooo!
Year 5, Day 148: Chatting with my sister about the kids and my fears and things, these things about Curran suddenly resonated so strongly. He built the Pack so his future family would be protected. I’ve worked so hard to build connections outside my bio family to provide my kids with chosen family they can rely on, unlike the bio family that I couldn’t.
He absolutely believed that Mahon would have kicked him out if he hadn’t taken care of the Rampaging Bear situation. My belief in the inevitability of abandonment by all trusted adults is just about ironclad. Still working on it. Chipping away bit by bit.
Also, the aswang from Grimm! Talk about the abusive sort of family obligation traditions.
Musing on bodies: What a terrible idea. The constant need for cleaning, and eating (multiple times a day!), flossing and brushing, dressing and undressing. It’s just maintenance maintenance maintenance. And that’s before taking into account illnesses or allergies or any deviation from a healthy state.
PTA meeting tonight – I forgot about it three times today. And just like that, our October calendar has filled up. Conference week, another PTA meeting, the fall carnival, a birthday party, a second attempt at SDCC registration.
Year 5, Day 149: I’ve been having vivid involved dreams again, not necessarily nightmares but alternate reality types of things. I usually wake up still half in that reality so I remember them pretty clearly, but they are weird.
I feel absurd for even thinking this but I was doing more research on native to CA flowers that aren’t toxic to animals (and people of course) and hopefully perennials. I planted poppies this year since we are currently without dog but that was unsuccessful anyway. I found baby blue eyes and am contemplating splurging on a ridiculous number of seeds (using a gift card!) in hopes they will be easy to grow and will produce the “field full of flowers” impression I’d like to have. $16 on more flower seeds that may come to nothing??
September 6, 2024
1. Smol Acrobat: mom, can you gwow more cucumbers for me and Wee? We wike dem!
The garden, meager as it is, is a hit with the kids too. This is maybe the most expensive hobby I’ve had in a while 😆
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