March 22, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 1: Hell of a day, I tell ya. A terrible confluence of events meant that PiC had to sleep from 3-8:30 am and then go into meetings most of the day. His meetings overlapped with Smol’s awake times so I ended up covering from 8 pm Sunday through 8 pm Monday, just in time for me to start the next night shift. I got absolutely no work done.
Luckily for him I was able to but this is a once in a long while kind of thing. I can’t sustain that physically or mentally or professionally.
Year 2, Day 2: Smol took a bit of pity on me and managed one 5 hour stretch of sleep which granted me about 3 hours. Blessed three hours. But then they woke up again at 430, hungry and squalling, and so much hungrier than usual that I had to nurse them intermittently for the next two hours. Sigh. By the time we woke up again, PiC was running late for his super early morning meeting and I had to shake him awake. That set a bit of the tone for the day.
I rested during Smol’s nap, which I usually don’t do but it was sorely needed after that 430-630 stretch. Unfortunately JB didn’t have their Zoom Fitness class after kindergarten today but they had a post class craft in mind so I left them to it after I unloaded the dryer. They’re responsible for putting away the laundry later after crafting.
I resigned myself to getting nothing done for the first half of the day because the tardiness spawned another meeting for PiC and I was just too mush-brained to do much during their admittedly decent nap (THANK YOU SNOO). I made lunch for the kids but stopped short of making lunch for adults because Smol Acrobat demanded to be picked up again. They are going through some serious clinginess and doesn’t like to play alone for more than 5 minutes before squawking up a storm. They used to play alone happily for 15-20 minutes, what happened?? Do we have to train them to enjoy solo time now that we finally get a decent nap more than not? I’m not enjoying this, whatever it is. There also seems to be some cluster feeding going on which I also don’t appreciate.
In any case, we survive til mid afternoon when PiC emerges from his den of stress and takes Sera out before taking the kids out. I sit like a lump of dough on the recliner for a while, just resting, while JB does some art. Eventually I finally drag myself up and out to join them for a walk but annoyingly my steps weren’t counted in my MapMyWalk app. That feeds data to the Achievement app.
By the by, if any of you use the Achievement app and haven’t maxed out your referrals, you’re welcome to give me your referral code and I’ll share it on the blog so you can get some referral points. Just email me! (more…)
March 15, 2021
Week 52 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 52, Day 359: After a 4.5 hour sleep, Smol is up at midnight, then again at 320 am for changes and feedings. My painsomnia is back full force these past few days so I get mere minutes of sleep between those wakings. They start squeaking a bit at 530 am so I push Snoo’s soothing levels to Level 3 and that bought us another hour. PiC takes them at 630 and I pass out for a bit longer. A little after 8 am, I manage to pry myself out of bed and join the family in the kitchen. PiC is holding Smol while JB has their breakfast, so I leash up Sera and take her out for a quick walk. She’s pulling like a sled dog though, so after she takes care of business, I take her to the backyard and have her run laps until she’s panting heavily, then she enjoys breakfast.
All this only takes us up to 8:30 am. Gotta take the day one hour at a time.
PiC covers baby time until 10, I take over and play with Smol until they’re ready for bed at 11. My next hour is yelling at my old work computer that JB uses for school because things aren’t working. I fix it and grouchily go fix lunch. After that I yell at my new work computer for an hour because THAT isn’t working.
It took me a while to get over my grouchiness but it finally faded after I got some work done and then had a brainstorm for dinner: chicken and veggie soup from scratch.
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I got curious about rents in this area because of our discussion on Twitter of this Atlantic article. Lo and behold, 4 bedroom family homes here are still renting for $4500-6000 a month. Welp.
Our mortgage was hovering near the low end of that scale before tax and insurance and I did a lot of shuffling of money (large payments to principle and recasting multiple times and then refinancing last fall) to halve it.
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March 9, 2021
*Wow I started this about a year ago. Now we have ANOTHER tiny human squawking frequently.
Not the perseverance kind of grit, we want to keep that in our lives.
The other kind that’s annoying and makes you feel itchy and irritable, like minor unnecessary arguments. I started the new year with a whole load of grumpiness. I was way behind in work, even though I’d worked all the holidays, because we also had a truckload of personal stuff to do (financial, family time, wanting to write for the blog after not feeling the urge to write for weeks, eating dinner every single night what is that why can we not just eat once a week??)
Solitary Diner talked about changing some things to make taking call less stressful. She can’t make call itself less stressful. But by figuring out that it’s the uncertainty of call, and how that uncertainty derails her, she was able to find a decent solution. By choosing not make a lot of plans on call days, she was able to appreciate it when call went her way instead of being upset when it didn’t go her way.
I had to make similar changes.
As parents: In our first year as parents, we had a tiny human squawking frequently. That derailment of my plans was doubly difficult when I’d had my heart set on getting some things done and getting some sleep that night. I tried to get everything done as things came up: caring for JB, answering emails, troubleshooting, admin work, walking the dog. But as my agent of change and chaos, while JB was the biggest variable, they weren’t the only one. As a result, I felt pulled in thirty six directions at once and I was always cranky. I finally tried compartmentalizing. When JB was awake, the only thing I did was handle JB and JB-adjacent tasks: laundry, clearing up, cooking, eating, organizing, packing lunch. All tasks during which JB could hang out with me and splitting my attention was no problem. There was no gourmet cooking happening, nothing on the stove ever needed my constant attention. When JB was asleep, the only thing I did was work.
Sectioning my day like that meant that while I still had to work a third shift, I was just tired, not tired, cranky, and frazzled.
I have to do something similar now that the pandemic is eating my brain and we’ve had JB home constantly. When I get tetchy, I have to do JB-adjacent things that don’t require my full attention.
Household 1: We recently just got my Roomba that I’ve been saving for. It’s been a 5 year dream in the saving! PiC pointed out that the dogs and their inability to drink without slopping half the bowl of water across the entire floor was going to be a problem. Roombas are not water bots. We’ve long been annoyed by the need to constantly mop up after our beloved pups who wanted to double as spraying hoses every time they drink but we’ve not considered what to ever actually done anything about it until now. I finally realized there was an area in the house I could move the food and water bowls to reduce the sloppage significantly, so I made the experimental shift. Mopping is down about 80%.
Household 2: I saved for years for this one. The Roomba itself is another way we’re gently removing some frustration. I want the floors to be vacuumed more frequently but I don’t have the energy or time to do it myself. The Roomba is a useful tool to help us out. Thanks to Wall-E, I imagine Ronnie has a personality as it scales minor obstacles, or gets stuck. I’m vastly enjoying being able to set Ronnie on the move and know my house is being cleaned while I work.
Household 3: We’ve stopped hand-washing all our dishes and instead run the dishwasher 2-4 times a week. If you told me ten years ago that PiC would relent on this chore, I’d have laughed my butt off. But here we are!
Work: I reconfigured software to give me quick access to my frequently used tools. Then I redesigned some templates that I were both clunky and didn’t work great. Now they are aesthetically pleasing and I get the job done faster! There has yet to be software to stop me from accidentally hitting “cancel” instead of “save” or closing a tab I didn’t mean to close, though.
All of this makes me think of that West Wing scene when Bruno tells the President that he would be a fool to ignore any tactic that won’t hurt them and can reduce drag on the campaign. I agree with the sentiment and really need to practice this more.
:: What things bother you? Can any of them be fixed with a small adjustment?
March 8, 2021
Week 51 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 51, Day 352: Smol Acrobat managed one five hour stretch of sleep at night!!!! Cue a silent celebration. This is especially appreciated because they only had two 30-minute naps between 12 pm to 6 pm yesterday and that was pure awful for everyone. We all wanted to cry.
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Grrrr, NewRez. When we refinanced, I specifically told them we were not escrowing. They told our insurance we have an escrow account anyway. WE DO NOT. If I weren’t on top of things, our homeowners and earthquake policies would have gone unpaid this year. I contacted our insurance agent to get them to fix this.
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I’m still waiting on our taxes to come back from the CPA. I had hoped we’d see it by the weekend since they said it’d be done “at the end of the week” but experience dictates that it’ll take another two reminders before I get the first draft.
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We have Chinese takeout leftovers for dinner tonight so I used the evening prep hour to make up a meatloaf for tomorrow’s dinner. I also accidentally over-ordered from Home Chef for this week so we’ll have three meals delivered on Wednesday.
Week 51, Day 353: I keep running the numbers on our investments and projecting returns using this Compound Calculator. I gave myself a micro midlife crisis moment because nothing I do to the numbers within reason will yield a more reliable and optimistic answer than “maybe we will have enough in the nest egg to consider retiring (if we can figure out the healthcare piece) in six years.” The “crisis” bit was feeling like I’m running out of time and these numbers trigger a bit of anxiety.
But it’s not like I won’t have anxiety if we pull the plug too early and it looks like we’re going to run out of money, though! I don’t know what’s up.
*****
Wow. I found a significant detail was overlooked in this year’s tax form and the error has gone back a few years so we now have also worry about filing amendments for the past three years as well. Good grief. But I hope it yields some refunds because this year’s tax bill is A WHOPPER.
*****
Today was full of bowling pins: setting tasks up and trying to knock them down.
I had to fill out the American Community Survey, pay my life insurance and car insurance bills, figure out whether our homeowners policy is sufficient, renegotiate my orthodontist bill, appeal our water bill, and and and ….
Week 51, Day 354: This was an “easy” day so I thought I’d actually chronicle it for the heck of it.
Smol Acrobat went to bed at 7 pm and woke up at 12:15 am so that was my cue. I changed their diaper, nursed them, and at 12:50 am, back into the Snoo they went. I couldn’t settle down so I read until 1:30 am knowing this would bite me later.
It did at 3:25 am when they were up again for another diaper change and feed. I creaked my way up and out of bed, and when they finished up at 4:15 am, I was almost too tired to put them back in the bassinet. But I did and they were back in again by 4:22 am even though they weren’t quite asleep yet. Not until they let out the obligatory shriek of protest at 4:25 am, after which they subsided into sleep.
I was out shortly after, with both my hands and wrists shrieking in pain. The previous night when I had to hold Smol Acrobat for a 30 minute marathon feeding session set off a fibro flare. Not good. By 6:20 am, Smol was awake and this time raring to start the morning with smiles and coos. My hands and wrists, however, were in agony. Luckily, as I struggled with the final diaper change of the night/morning shift changeover, PiC was up and took over. We discussed the morning for about five minutes as I searched out a half dose of my heavy duty pain meds – he had two meetings from 9-11 am, and he was also behind on critical work. Turns out the night before after he’d read to JB, they came in to bunk in our bed (thank you king size bed) and left him dozing on the sofa. He was so tired that he had gone to bed “early” instead of working past midnight as usual. He planned to try and do some emails while minding Smol during their morning session, I told him to wake me in 45 minutes so he could work if he couldn’t do both at the same time.
I woke up around 8:10 am and opened the bedroom door to find him lurking in the hallway with a sleepyish SA, getting ready to come in and put them to bed. But that wasn’t happening, JB was waking up too and at the sight of their older sib, SA was wide awake again. We gave in to the inevitable and let the two of them cuddle and play for a while. I took over at 8:45 am to feed SA so that he could make breakfast and then get set up for his meeting.
By 9 am, Smol was tired so they went into the Snoo for a nap, and then it was a race against the clock. Smol’s first nap tends to be an absolutely garbage short 30 minutes so I had to cram as much as I could into those precious minutes. I inhaled my breakfast, set up the computer for JB to start their schoolwork and sat down with my breast pump and work to do. It’s Wednesday so they don’t have a class session today, they just have schoolwork to do on Seesaw. I hate Seesaw with a passion but with bribery (a promised mystery prize if there’s no whining) those sessions now go by quickly without mental pain. JB had strict instructions not to interrupt me but of course by 9:37 am, about 3/4 of the way through my pumping session they came in to tell me that Smol was crying. They used good judgement!
I stop my session early and go fetch the baby. I changed their diaper and sat on the sofa coaching JB through some sticky bits of their assignment, review the ones they had done already and approved them for submission. Smol laid on the sofa, kicking and playing. I changed another diaper at 9:40 and prepped a bottle of formula for them. They weren’t ready to eat until 9:52. They’re being fussy about eating so only manage 1 ounce at first. JB asks for a break from Seesaw so I approve a 15 minute break. They set the timer, come to play with Smol, and bring two books over. One is for me to read to Smol and the other is for them to read to Smol. Break over, JB’s back to Seesaw and finishes up as Smol starts to get tired. They finish a second ounce of formula while I suggest that JB work on writing correspondence with me, and I make that a typing lesson. They’re assigned two people to type up short letters to, while I go put Smol to bed. At 11 am, I start the process of getting Smol in bed and when they finally drop off, I go back to coaching JB through typing in Word. Autocorrect is getting their goat. “IT’S PUTTING RED SQUIGGLES IN!” they bellow. I sit down and dash off a couple of cards myself, some friends are going through tough times and I want to send them notes.
I finish coaching JB on their notes and print them out so they can add some art, I use that time to get some more work done. We still need to replace our baby monitor so I periodically go down the hall to check on Smol. 11:50 am, their eyes are open but the bassinet soothes them back to sleep. I finish some more work. JB brings me their completed letters and we get them into envelopes. They want to have a snack but I suggest we get lunch going since it’s noon – they would like a PB&J sandwich and I sign off on this plan. PiC emerges from his work den a short while later and joins JB in the kitchen while I dash off a note to surrogate mom. I want to add mine to JB’s envelope. Letters are all set, I emerge to scarf down the lunch they made, and tell PiC I will take the next shift with Smol so he can get some more work done. He’s got an extra busy day today and I did my extra busy day yesterday. He can take over with the kids after JB’s afternoon lesson and Smol’s next nap. Smol blessedly naps until 1:55 pm during which time I’ve gotten a heck of a lot of work done and organized. I change their diaper and feed them, then we kill 45 minutes. I show them JB’s art while I write checks, we talk and sing, we play with their little owl. They go through another diaper / feed cycle, and flip from smiles to shriek so it’s time for bed! Their eyes are wide open as I swaddle and hum to them, they start doing fishy mouth so I insert the pacifier and hold it in for them for about 24 seconds and they’re satisfied to drop off to sleep. I go and dash off another couple rounds of work, while they log a 50 minute nap: I feed Sera, answer emails, pay bills, look into classes for JB for Spring Break, update our automatic savings transfers, print out some coloring sheets for JB for later.
Awake and chirping at 4:20 pm, I change their diaper and hand them off to PiC. He feeds them while I put on my headphones and sit down for my second pump session. I knock off work while I’m pumping, and text my cousin who’s having a bit of a time with work and life balance. The milk gets bagged up and frozen, I wash up bottles and pump stuff for what feels like the millionth time, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s 5:30 and time to make dinner.
JB had asked for an extra journal to make a book to share with Smol. I keep journals for each of the kids but JB wants creative control so they tackle the new book with a box of stickers.
PiC had already unpacked the Home Chef delivery and taken out some of the leftovers from earlier to warm up so all I had to do was dive right into the cooking while he minds Smol. Teamwork! I snack heavily while cooking because it’s been a long time since lunch. JB sets the table and goes off to bathe, PiC feeds Smol again. I get dinner on the table and take Smol because I don’t feel like eating first. JB emerges from the bath just after PiC’s scarfed down dinner and takes Smol in for a bath. I prep a plate for JB since tonight’s meal is rather messy, then retrieve Smol from the bath to dress them. PiC takes over and puts them to bed while I eat dinner. JB gets to watch some Wild Kratts while I eat.
The bassinet is a magical thing – PiC is back out to join me for the rest of dinner within ten minutes. Before the bassinet, I had to put Smol to bed and I’d be stuck the rest of the night with them because we were cosleeping. Also because of my hands, lifting Smol Acrobat in and out before this month wasn’t a possibility. I clear half the table, take my medicine, get my aligners in and come back out to do more clean up. PiC’s contemplating a late night Costco run to spare everyone else the trouble of running an errand. I don’t love the idea. I want my family safe at home after dark, but he has a point. He plans to wait for me to shower and wash my hair though. I can’t remember the last time I washed my hair. He reads to JB and takes off when I’m ready.
I’m ready for bed by 8 but spent 20 minutes typing this up and as I get in bed, I remember I need to do my #PFPlank!
Three more planks done, I think about the day. It was remarkably smooth in comparison to most of our days and yet I am pretty sure I never stepped outside today. I never had time. I still haven’t picked a new baby monitor. My lower back still hurts a lot (which is why I’m doing the planks), so popping Smol Acrobat into a carrier to take a walk feels very unappealing. Oh and I forgot to go pick up JB’s school packet so we need to do that on Friday. I also feel pretty sick from my heavy duty pain meds which is always irritating. I need the pain relief to sleep but having to take nausea in its place feels unfair. (Later update, the nausea kept me awake until 4 am. I guess I would have been up with the pain too but that was just irritating.)
Week 51, Day 355: Smol has the most noxious gas. I wouldn’t even say “for a baby” because JB was like this too, and Seamus used to join in the toots.
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I think I knew this word at one time but it had slipped my mind: Hiraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [hɪraɨ̯θ, hiːrai̯θ]) is a Welsh word for longing or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret. The feeling of longing for a home that no longer exists or never was. A deep and irrational bond felt with a time, era, place or person.
I feel this about a lot of the PF blogging world; I miss some folks from the early days. But I’m really lucky that some are still around one way or another and it’s not just all impersonal or new folks I don’t know well.
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I finally sealed up the two flat rate boxes to ship to our 5th Lakota family. I need to write up the email update to the group for the donations to date.
Week 51, Day 356: Terrible night, truly. Smol woke every 3 hours which meant I was up for an hour each time. Usually I just sort of float from one short nap to the next but last night I was so tired I fell asleep after nursing them and woke 55 minutes later. They were safe. No matter how tired I am, my body locks in a specific cradle position and does not move when I’ve got a baby cuddled up to me. But it was disconcerting to record the start of nursing time at 205 and wake up at 3 am. We made it to 5 am whereupon Smol starting chuckling and talking.
Oh. Time to be up, I see. We hung out in bed for about 80 minutes and then like a switch flipped, they freaked out. Oh, time to eat and sleep again. Right-o. They nursed and passed out, I tucked them into a swaddle and tried to sleep too but sleep was elusive so when Sera came trotting down the hall to do her daily check to confirm all humans are still where she left them, I went and took her for a morning walk. The timing worked out perfectly, I got her squared away, then she told me that Smol was awake so I fetched them out to the living room so PiC could have a rare sleep in. I’ll rest later, he goes to sleep late and gets to sleep through until morning but he’s always got to be up early to mind all three kids. JB woke up next and played with Smol for a little bit, and then went to go get ready for school.
PiC woke up and took over for me with Smol while I dished up a quick hot breakfast and then I took my break in the form of paying bills, writing cards, and addressing envelopes for the cards that JB wrote. It’s soothing to noodle around with my spreadsheets.
I had to call it quits and take two rounds of laying down before and after lunch because my body, having been up since 5 am without good sleep before that, was no longer functioning. And I wasn’t even mean to myself about it. Progress!
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Today I learned that typing either of the following into a browser gets you a new GDoc or GSheet: doc.new and sheet.new. Love it!
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Next week we’re going to be at the one year mark of this pandemic affecting our lives. What a very weird place to be.
:: How is your mental / emotional / physical health as we round the corner to a year of this odd reality?
