August 12, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (219)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 124: My struggle with brain fog for the past decade has routinely made me feel akin to Charlie from Flowers for Algernon on the back end of the experiment: my mental capabilities have have peaked and now I was just on an inexorable downward slide. That was before I had a term for what was happening when my brain felt like cotton and I almost physically struggled to get my brain to work or think. These days, I know what it is but that doesn’t help the slight depression that sets in when my own personal Karl the fog rolls over. This is one of the reasons I started Duolingo, out of a hope that maybe the language practice will both sharpen my skills a bit and maybe get the brain synapses snapping enough to ward off the fog.

I’ve been lucky to be clear for a few weeks, but I can feel it edging in again. Sigh. I didn’t miss mini-Karl. Fitting that it’s rolled in thick, along with SF-Karl.

Getting back into the swing of things of work again has meant dealing with the height of people’s incompetence. I knew the pendulum would eventually swing this way, but hoped it would be a lot further off in the future. I published this tee and tote design to let off some steam.

Trainer time: we agreed to start with four small workouts a week to see how that goes. This week it’ll be Sun/Tues/Thurs/Sat to give me a rest day in between all workouts at first. Yesterday’s was broken up across the day: a 14 minute walk / 2 sets of 4 modified pushups (my wrists hated that) / 2 sets of 5 lateral raises (not bad), 3 sets of 15 second planks (I didn’t give myself much recovery time in between, no wonder the last two felt so much harder). Today is my rest day and the way I’m crackling, boy howdy. Nothing hurts too much yet so we’re going to not push it. That’s the whole motto of this training work: don’t push it. Consistency is our goal.

Year 5, Day 125: All Neil Gaiman works have been evicted from my shelf. They’re all in a box to be labeled with something appropriately scathing. I won’t be angry at myself for believing he was a reasonably decent person at the time I was a fan and enjoyed his works, the Death of the Endless is my headcanon, but I hate that he betrayed everyone’s trust so badly.

Work was sixteen kinds of frustrating today so I consciously chose to work on a personal project at night instead of putting in free overtime. I’m making packing cubes for the kids. I had completely forgotten how much I hate sewing corners. Hate hate hate. Jabbed myself several times with the pins and sewed over the zipper a few times trying to navigate those corners. By the end, I’d attached the zipper to the side fabric and the top fabric but was completely disgruntled instead of proud. The seams are hideous and the top fabric is trying to fray. Once I attach the bottom piece of fabric, it’ll be done. Ugly but done. I’d had a moment earlier today where I thought about auctioning a set of packing cubes or zipper pouches for a Lakota fundraiser but that’s going to have to sit on the back shelf until I get much better at this. How much of the problem is my fabrics mismatch? This time I’m combining a soft fuzzy material with canvas instead of a plain basic cotton and canvas. Maybe I measured better last time.

Trainer time: my first assigned exercise was 2 sets of squats, up to ten reps per set. Ok, no problem. I watched the video on form and set to it. It felt so easy so I was cranking them out but as I got to 6, 7 I remembered that this is my first week of exercise in decades. Also that pacing thing? Oh yeah. Stopped at 7. Gave myself a full minute of recovery time so I could fetch my lunch. Did another 6 being mindful I shouldn’t blow it all out in my first week as I am wont to do, and those 6 felt much harder. My legs had recovered enough from that initial set to say nope don’t like it.

It took two hours for the pain and fatigue to pass. I could still feel the strain by the time I wrapped up

Year 5, Day 126: I grew up hearing this song but never knew the name of it, or the lyrics. Thanks to The Brothers Sun for bringing it back to me. It’s first nostalgic and then painful because my earliest memories of it are my parents singing it together and that’s a period of time I just don’t know what to do with.

“The parent is always the parent. The child is always the child.” Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. I didn’t expect that bit of therapy.

Trainer time: Today’s a rest day. Stopping after the one exercise instead of pushing through for pride’s sake yesterday was ultimately the right call. I’m very tired today but not so wiped that I can barely function. Tomorrow, I’ll dial way back on the reps in each set so that I can do all of the 3 or 4 planned exercises across the day. Also it’s best if I don’t do them all in one go, I think, that way my body can’t surf on endorphins in the early sets and then crash like it usually does when I’m doing something fun.

Year 5, Day 127: Happy surprise, a few people donated to the Lakota Pine Ridge Giving Project today! ❤️ Not sure how they found me but happy they did.

Also, I got so many compliments on my Reading tee-shirt and Svaha shirt that I refreshed the design: Read Recklessly shirt and tote.

Trainer time! Still dragging this morning but I started early with one of the three exercises anyway: lateral raises. I like these! I did my modified pushups in the afternoon, my lying leg raises in the evening. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that doing it broken up this way is “wrong” but so far, doing it this way means I’m better able to gauge how much a single exercise has taken out of me before I completely go over the cliff. It can take a couple hours for that to sink in, so I’m hoping that after a while, I’ll be able to join up two sets of exercises further down the line, then all three or four, into a single session without more than this level of fatigue. There’s definitely more fatigue but it’s still bearable.

Year 5, Day 128: I had an awful nightmare where I lost track of JB and Smol Acrobat in an airport due to a series of terrible decisions I made in the dream that I would never make in waking life. I remember at the end of the dream asking myself why did I decide to do that?? It makes no sense! And it got me thinking about what my subconscious is anxious about (I’m a terrible parent?) and then about my mom and how she was at age 10 already carrying the responsibilities of an adult. About how the only thing she wanted was to feel loved later in her life but I was so ill-equipped to offer that to her because I didn’t even recognize how to show or accept unconditional love myself. Love is always conditional in my subconscious, when it comes to me. My kids only love me because I kept them alive, for example.

So I woke in a very emotionally ruffled state. Sadly, so did Smol Acrobat. I shook it off after trading terrible nightmare stories with a couple friends on Bluesky but they decidedly did not. They reacted to every little jostle with tears, and when JB helped them put their lovie to bed so they could go to breakfast, that also caused a waterfall. (A little related: Must resume my search for ice packs for the kids and for myself that can stay in the freezer longterm. My last couple of tries were returned since the instructions said the packs could only be in the freezer for a couple hours at a time. That’s not helpful!)

Anyway the latest on the UHC FSA debacle: after the Department of Labor questioned their practices, they immediately processed the claims again, however, we couldn’t log in to access the Explanation of Benefits. We tried 20 times on different browers and computers and internet connections: sometimes it would almost log in and then kick us out.

When PiC finally got someone on the phone to see why the log in wasn’t working today, they claimed that the username was case sensitive and that we weren’t entering the right combination of upper and lowercase. Except that we most certainly didn’t make any changes since we called them, and we definitely would not have changed it to the combination that they claim is the right one, so I’m positive that that isn’t the whole truth, and also that someone on their side changed it out of spite if it was indeed changed. Because if it had actually been changed, why would the log in work enough to get us partly logged in and then log us back out when we tried to access anything? That’s not how logins work.

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August 5, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (218)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 124: A Twitter thread about Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite children’s books made me realize I’ve never read Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. I’ve put it on hold at the library but am very confused why I had to enter my email address to place it when I was logged in. That’s new and weird.

I’m still walking around like I’m missing a limb without Sera (or Seamus, or Doggle). It’s hard to breathe in that brief second when I remember that I’m coming home to the dogshaped holes in my life, not to my beloved furry feets. It’s getting better but sometimes it’s like a gut punch.

My dog stand-in (the garden) surprised me today. I forgot that I’d transferred the non-germinating green beans into Potato Bag 2, sort of giving up on them. It looked like the next generation of potato plants were starting up nicely but on closer inspection, three of them look like they’re actually green bean plants! Probably. We’ll give it two more weeks to see what they look more like. Turns out set it and forget it isn’t just for my investments.

Year 5, Day 125: The ridiculously high wastewater levels in California have prompted me to review our protection layers. We have nasal sprays (Nasitrol, iota-carageenan is the ingredient that apparently matters). There are some very early studies suggesting that a combination of H1 and H2 antihistamines (loratidine or cetizirine + famotidine) may also be protective against infection (or perhaps it’s protective against severe illness). I’ve got both in plenty already for their prescribed use so why not take them regularly for both that and possible increased COVID protection? We obviously still mask but it’s imperfect protection during the summer when we’ve got sunblock on and our faces get sweaty, and sometimes we have to unmask to eat where other people are.

So, layers. We’re boosted. We’re masking. We have nasal spray and we’ll have prophylactic OTC meds to help mitigate if we do get infected. We can’t avoid all humanity, despite my preferences, there are summer fairs and carnivals that kids would like to experience, so we are layering our protections in hopes of continuing to stave off COVID long term. May the one breach with Smol Acrobat be the only one. I’m really worried about the cumulative effects of COVID for the kids. My life is already pretty hellish with chronic pain, fatigue and PEM. I only wish all this on terrible people who need to stop hurting people. I don’t want my kids to get it but the data suggests that the more infections they experience, the higher the probability they’ll get Long COVID. So. Layers for the summer (and every season)!

Year 5, Day 126: Did I ever go outside today? Other than taking the kids out and getting them loaded up in the car to send them off for their days, I don’t think I did. It’s been that kind of day. Week. Month. I WAS doing better at going out daily for a walk but I need to get back on that.

Another disgruntled humph, my throat has been sore for multiple weeks. The antivirals aren’t budging it. I’ve got a theory that this is stress induced because I have no other symptoms, no one is catching anything from me, and my body has a history of overreacting to the least little thing. I’ve been managing the pain with cycles of acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Thank goodness those work enough so I can still eat and drink with moderate discomfort. I remember a bout earlier this year when they couldn’t even do that much.

Also? I’m melting. I used to handle heat well. Even humid heat. I didn’t LIKE it but I could deal. Now the temp ticks up 10-15 degrees and I’m the Wicked Witch of the West. MELTING!

I did submit a large Costco order for our August Lakota family, and conducted a massive clearing out of a disorganized snack drawer dumping snacks circa 2014-2022. Fresh snacks!

Year 5, Day 127: This is my designated errands day. PiC has been taking JB to work with him most non-camp days to give me a chance to get through work so I’ve taken today to hang with them and DO ALL THE THINGS. We have to hit the dentist, library, dry cleaner, Staples, and post office. Can we do this all and also finish the laundry? Let’s find out!

Conclusion: We were only able to go to the dentist and Staples. We were late getting out the door so we didn’t collect the library books, the dry cleaner went out of business (!) and the post office just felt like too much effort after we struck out at the dry cleaner. So we went home and I did a TON of organizing and cleaning. That was satisfying.

I’m mentally chewing on First Gen American’s comment at Nicole and Maggie: My uncle did give annual gifts to his kids and they were unemployed or underemployed most of their lives. It ended in the worst way. (One kid stealing from parents when he didn’t want to share remaining inheritance with sibling). It ruined those kids. I may help with some big expenses like grandkid college funds, but will not do regular handouts if I can help it.

That’s terrible! And it makes me wonder how much the annual gifts were accompanied by other life ruining actions or habits, or if that was the primary / key cause. I know other people who give their adult kids annual gifts but IIRC, they started after the kids were older and reasonably established in their respective careers. The adult kids’ habits aren’t maybe the best financial habits but they also don’t have to be with this fairly significant cushion to pad any mistakes or run of the mill impulses. They’re not getting drug habit money, so they seem ok? I also don’t recall if it’s actually annual or just no more than annual to be under the gift tax exclusion limit.

I am still of the mindset that we’ll pay for about half of undergrad for each kid but I’m not sure if we’ll have enough for 4 years saved by the time college starts, so I doubt this will be a real life issue for us but I AM curious about what the right level of giving / passing down money is to ensure that your kids aren’t terrible humans or aren’t ruined by the prospect of a neverending spigot of cash. Is it all expenses up through college? And then maybe they can have up to the gift tax exclusion if they donate half of it? How DO you handle having more than enough ten times over without creating a completely entitled human?

Year 5, Day 128: No idea if this was going to happen regardless but I’ve neglected the flower bit of the garden for a couple weeks. To my surprise and delight, they didn’t die off. Instead, three of the plants bloomed! I have flowers! 🎉

Less good news, we briefly saw an old friend over the weekend (we were masked, they were not) and they just let us know they’ve tested positive for COVID. They said it before I thought it: what did I (you) expect? They socialized at three large events in a row (two of which I didn’t know about before they notified me) and didn’t mask for any of them. I’m not thrilled. But I’m not surprised either. So many people are just swanning about unmasked while our wastewater levels skyrocket. I don’t know what anyone else is thinking but I’m most definitely thinking absolutely not! Now I’m mildly obsessively reviewing our layers to make sure we’re doing any and everything that would mitigate risk.

We were masked, did the nasal spray at the start of the day, were boosted. Smol Acrobat briefly unmasked to chomp on some snacks but then they went outside. That part has me extra worried about whether those few minutes were enough to infect them.

Back to better news while I figure out when we should all test ourselves: I’ve made the decision to work with an online fitness trainer to try and develop a program that doesn’t set off my fibro or ME/CFS. I want to get stronger and leaner, a little healthier heart-wise. I don’t care what numbers are on the scale as long as I feel stronger and leaner and like this body is mine again.

I’ve had an intake call to cover medical history and relevant stuff, and we start next week. There were a lot of unexpected emotions that bubbled up during that call, and after. Fear and worry: that it won’t work with my ME/CFS, that I’ll fail again at trying to get a little healthier or feel a little less alien, of getting my hopes up. Unsettled: making myself a priority? Weird? Hope and excitement: automatically trying to repress this a little bit, we have to start slow and low (intensity) or we will definitely fail. Wish me luck? I could use an accountability partner.

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