March 10, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (249)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 316: I don’t know what’s for dinner but I DO know what’s for dessert: a delightful little apple crisp we found at the farm store. This is going to be great! We visited a small town over the weekend and played tourist which meant I looked for yummy new foods to bring home like a fresh artichoke lemon pesto.

We also made a quick grocery run, so added to the pantry: beef and fireroasted tomatoes for my future chili-making (maybe I could throw this together tomorrow?), a mirepoix for a future chicken pot pie (might be able to manage this midweek if I can defrost the chicken and cut it up, sure hope I still have pie crust in the freezer). I’ve been thinking about cooking these things for weeks and have been slowly acquiring ingredients one at a time and freezing them. There are three poblano and Anaheim peppers already diced and frozen ahead of use. I just need to some green onions and the chili can start to come together pretty quickly.

We might eat well this week! (Fingers crossed)

Sad update: JB asked for tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner. They picked a new to us tomato soup, Rill Foods’ Umatilla Tomato Soup Mix, and it was the worst tomato soup we’ve ever had. It was bitter and kind of gritty. Yuck. We couldn’t even finish our first bowls, every bite was awful. I tried to doctor it with sour cream but it was unsalvageable.

I speculated that my wicked heartburn before dinner was trying to warn me off it entirely but I was too foolish to listen.

Year 5, Day 317: I jinxed us. We did not eat well. Also, my heartburn turned into an internal wildfire. It woke me multiple times and by morning I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t experiencing some kind of heart problem. The advice line nurse and an ER doc thought there were enough concerning symptoms I should come in to get checked out. Sigh. Two hours of tests, IV drip and copious meds before the enflamed vise-like band around my chest and upper back eased up enough I could breathe again. The x-ray, bloodwork, and EKG all came back normal so as always, we have no idea what my body is doing and why. My (physician) relative speculated on a few other possible diagnoses, I’ll follow up on those ideas with my primary care, while I try to figure out how to cope with this horrible burning pain. And I’m completely exhausted.

A Bsky mutual gave me a useful list of rules they follow for their heartburn, and I backed away from the calcium carbonate Mylanta this evening in case that really is just making things worse. It was administered with lidocaine this morning and the heartburn came back with a vengeance this evening. Sigh. I had such high hopes. Call me … I don’t know what to call it but I pulled out chicken to defrost anyway in case I might be able to cook it later this week.

Year 5, Day 318: I don’t know how optimistic people function in life. I know a few people whose attitude and approach to life is “I always decide to have a good day.” And things turn out reasonably well for them! Meanwhile I say “2025 is going to be a little less shitty! I made a plan!” and then the fates cackle and kick my teeth in. What am I doing wrong? I’m referring to work life and life in the US in general, but also in specific, my health this year.

Yesterday’s ordeal kicked off muscle aches at a level I haven’t experienced in years, unbearable aches that drove me out of bed because I couldn’t stand laying there and hurting anymore. I had some hazy desperate thought of walking it off, maybe. That did not work. PiC attempted to comfort me and that helped a little bit and I was able to get a little sleep but honestly, my status is roughly “death warmed over”.

There’s a bitter irony in my having written that and then getting a text from my friends from four jobs back. Our former coworker T, who I didn’t know was battling cancer, died. We weren’t close but we cared about each other when we worked together and I’m kind of numb.

Year 5, Day 319: Today was a hell of a slog at work. But. While it wasn’t good, it was better. I’m still in a lot of pain but:

I managed to locate the possible ant entry point in JB’s room and put down bait.

I pulled out the defrosted chicken thighs, pondering on the premium we pay for boneless meat because if we didn’t, I could never cook at all, and cut them into chunks (5 minutes). My recipes are stretched across 2-6 days as it is and sometimes I still can’t cook before my ingredients go off.

I came back after a long break and separated the onions out of the mirepoix. Boiled the celery and carrots briefly, then boiled the chicken cubes briefly. Set them aside to cool. I pulled the frozen pie crusts out to defrost. Tomorrow I’ll make the roux. There’s no time and no energy for that today, not if I’m going to make it through dinner, bath and bedtime. JB’s been wanting me to make a chicken pot pie for over a year and it’s taken me this long to attempt it again.

I’d defrosted too much chicken the rest of the thighs go in an adobo chicken marinade. Thankfully it takes more effort to find the ingredients than it does to put together the marinade. They’ll cook tomorrow.

Then it hit me tonight: T died. And so did my mentor who passed suddenly last January. So did my last dog, Sera. A long-time friendship died about this time last year. A huge seismic shift for the worse happened at work this time last year. This country elected the worst shitbag last November and let that into the White House this January and it’s been nothing but chaos since.

This has been such a painful fourteen months. I thank therapy and meds and PiC’s support for keeping me going but the bigger surprise is that my body didn’t cave earlier.

Year 5, Day 320: Money things I’m stiiiiillllll waiting on: our tax filing. Confirmation of any raise for me this year. Confirmation of my bonus amount. I’m trying to be patient but everything seems to be delayed for one unknown reason or another and that’s a bit of a frustration.

PiC got his percentage, that’ll be a modest increase. With how much I’ve increased our direct aid, I’d hoped for more. Also to keep pace with the cost of living but I’m glad he got anything at all, we never take that for granted in this economy and political environment. We really don’t know how long we’ll keep our jobs in the face of this administration so I’m doing my best to balance self-preservation planning and supporting the vulnerable in our communities.

At least we had the adobo chicken ready to cook tonight, I didn’t have any brain left by the end of today. This week was really a deep dive into a deep hole of BLEH.

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March 3, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (248)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 309: One of the many “first things” I did this morning was to schedule alarms for alllll my meetings. Has to be on my phone, can’t do it on calendars because those reminders are useless for my brain, apparently.

Speaking of useless and my brain, I ordered a load of supplies for my puppy niblings on the weekend. Today I realized AUGHHH I sent it to the wrong address!! I called Chewy, told them I mega goofed and asked if there was anything we could do? The CSR was very kind, laughed with me about it, and offered a couple solutions. Both of them cost me nothing and the right puppies would get the right delivery. In a day when everything else took so much more work to produce less result, that help was much appreciated.

I managed to throw together dinner with all kinds of fish: poke from the local market, seared our two last chunks of ahi tuna from a friend’s catch, and Sunday’s baked salmon all made it on the table with rice and cucumbers. Thank goodness that was easy. I also threw a frozen Costco lasagna in the oven which was going to take too long for dinner but juuust in case people were still hungry, figured it’d be ready for the tail end of dinner. JB scarfed 3/4 of the seared ahi tuna and then held out for dessert lasagna. This is probably getting to be a bad habit. I made dessert cornbread on the weekend.

I feel this quote deeply, all the time: “Of course I’m amazing at it but I hate it! It’s all relationships and people. So many people. In person.” Mike B, Madam Secretary.

Year 5, Day 310: Ah ha. So this virus is shaping up to be flu-like. Fantastic. I could blame my mood on that today but I’ll be honest, there are 15 million other reasons for my “why can’t I retire Right Flipping Now” scowling and growling. Most of them are at the US government, a significant number of those reasons are at work, and there’s no day I’m particularly happy at work these days. We are making progress on one set of important projects to get support in place so that’s a long term good but it’s hard to feel positive right now. This is going to take time to settle down.

I put myself to bed to work, and that helped me. I didn’t feel better by the time I had to pick up JB and do the working from an uncomfortable chair at JB’s activity thing, but at least it wasn’t a lot worse.

We had an “easy” night planned for dinner: a Costco Irish stew with a Costco loaf of bread. Not planned: JB injuring their hand. I bandaged it up to stabilize it and let them sleep in my bed because they’re a strange creature when it comes to their bed nest and they had a specific nesting ritual planned for tonight which they can’t do one handed. Here’s hoping the swelling goes down tomorrow and it’s not worse than a sprain.

Year 5, Day 311: There is simultaneously too much work and yet somehow not enough distraction from the fact that we’re waiting on multiple financial things: bonus announcements, raise announcements, our taxes and whether we owe or expect a refund. I hate waiting! It should be a good thing but it can’t be good until I actually have the pertinent information and see if it’s what we need. *GIMME*

I’m also extra anxious on the tax front. If we do owe more, I don’t want to give this administration a penny. If we are owed a refund, what’s the likelihood they’ll actually be paid? Seems low!

Around midday I wandered outside to find that the weather had changed on me. Not too hot, not too cold, just perfect. I still felt like garbage physically but the emotional uplift was temporarily so strong that I went and weeded the garden a bit. I opened all the windows and aired out the house.

That also reminded me that JB’s in between swimsuits sizes and Primary.com has a 60% off sale so I picked out clearance items in the next two sizes up for them. Smol Acrobat already has their next two sizes up so they’re good for now. I wish shopping for swimsuits for myself felt as simple as picking roughly the right sizes and then clicking BUY. Never has felt that way though.

Year 5, Day 312: My pain flares are coming more frequently and at a higher levels like it’s building up to a tsunami. I’m increasing my antidepressants dosage today for overall pain maintenance, and have an appointment to talk to the chronic pain pharmacist next week about any other pain meds I could try for the acute pain.

Whine: I have to set our eye appointments AGAIN. Didn’t we just do this?? I find that I dread eye appointments so much it feels like once a year per person is too much. Versus dental appointments which happen twice or thrice a year.

Oh hey I do not hate the La Croix Lime flavor! Our dentist had them out for some things and I gave it a try. Not bad! Now I’m hoping they have other flavors I like but I’m wary of trying a 12 pack.

I have to do my planks today, don’t I? I usually try to do them Sunday or Monday because we are not friends and the mental fortitude required to meet your mortal workout enemy for fifty six seconds a pop doesn’t exist by the end of the week. But Sunday and Monday my flu symptoms were overwhelming so here we are. Thursday planks. Three sets of 56-second planks. You know what helps? Taking off your socks before you plank so you’re not fighting to plank AND keep your toes from slipping out from under you. Protip.

While I was laid out on the floor, I also did 30 glute bridges and 40 lying leg raises. I live here now.

Year 5, Day 313: After I went into a 3 week flare up after my last massage, I worried that my body couldn’t handle massages anymore. But thinking about the timing more, it had to be coincidental because in that same week, I got very bad news and then we were also just a couple weeks out from the inauguration so my whole being was clenched tight as a drum in anticipation of the terrible that was able to roll out.

I’m now attributing the massive flare-up to the corresponding spike of stress going through the stratosphere in January. So I had my massage which helped my back that’s been a wreck since working from bed for so many nights, and have increased my antidepressants which may be sufficient to stave off the worst of my tsunami of anxiety. It does feel less intense than it’s been feeling so that’s something. We made some good decisions: to NOT volunteer tonight at the PTA thing. Only PiC was going to go but that left me managing the kids alone on the Friday night after a long as hell week. We decided the better choice was to accept a last minute invitation to see our friends on the weekend for an impromptu overnight, so we called it a night early.

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February 24, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (247)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 302: This is the first day I’ve had to mostly myself (while still being responsible for JB) for so long I actually can’t remember when last I had this luxury. The morning was dedicated to setting up the back-up laptop (3 hours in and about 60% done). I planned to pop out for a spot of gardening (hauling soil) afterwards but my hips said absolutely not so instead the plan became trying to get a better rate from Comcast (also no dice, I have to wait til my promotional period is almost over because their offers right now stink).

For some time off my butt, I discarded the ideas to make pretzels, or mozzarella cheese, from kits. Both too time consuming and apparently you cannot make cheese from ultra pasteurized milk so we didn’t have the right ingredients. I mixed up a marinade for seared tuna steaks and baked a load of mini muffins from scratch using an easy recipe a PF buddy shared (turned out great but that zapped all my energy). The recipe WAS simple but the physical demands were too much and sent me to bed for two hours. Unfortunately, amid all the attempts at decompression, my plan from last week to hack off a foot of my hair was entirely forgotten. Drat!

This was the first homecooked meal I’ve made in at least that long, or longer and it’s no coincidence that it lands on my single day off but it was also fortuitous that I defrosted the fish two days earlier. We had seared tuna in a soy honey sesame marinade with rice and roasted broccoli. Mini muffins for dessert!

Year 5, Day 303: Double Mondays are the pits. I front loaded the day with three dog encounters and agreeing to dogsit for our elderly neighbor who has a family emergency to tend to soon. That will be weird, we haven’t had a dog around for ten months now. I felt like jumping out of my skin half the day, not sure why but speculated it was being too keyed up with stress and being full to the brim with emotions about the work and the world.

Still, I managed to avoid any meetings today so I was able to power through so much work, my personal backlog was as close to tamed as it ever gets.

The kids moved up in their self defense class to a more intense class. I was dreading this change because of the time of the new class, but I’ve tested a few ways to deal with it and might be making it work well enough to reduce my stress over the change.

I’m easing my way back into training this week. It’s both frustrating to have broken my streak and to feel so weak again after a couple bad weeks. It’s taken six months to feel a little stronger and so little time to feel like I’m back at the beginning. I know I’m not, but the first pushups and planks back are

Year 5, Day 304: What a frustrating day. I could feel the virus getting the better of me so I had to work from bed. Increasing chaos with several upcoming transitions at work means more of my attention is spent on answering questions (ohhhhh I hate questions!) than working. An hour of calls, and an hour and a half at the orthodontist, and no lunch. I was at the end of my tether by 530 pm by which point I had to figure out what to feed people. I didn’t try very hard. It was quick cheese pasta from Costco, pasta sauce, and mini corn dogs alongside bell peppers and carrots.

What is it with kids? I hollered for JB while I was trying to get dinner on the table and they just yelled “YES??” back. Get your young behind out here where I can actually talk to you. By the time they dragged their tardy butt out to the kitchen my patience had snapped. Is it too much to ask them to use their legs, blessed with the energy of healthy youth, to travel the less than 50 feet to the room where I am doing three things at once to hear me out? ARGH. I have told them both that I had better hear the running of feet when I call their names from now on, do not make me call you twice. The “or else” is unspoken but very loud nonetheless.

Bedtime was another six rounds of nonsense. PiC is as overworked as I am so he keeps falling asleep in the middle of reading to Smol Acrobat (I don’t blame him, I’d be falling asleep everywhere too, I just suffer from insomnia/painsomnia so I can’t. Almost wish I could). Smol Acrobat then escapes containment to come find me and reports “Daddy fell asweep”. Last night, JB was enabling the escapee by cuddling and offering to read to them, tonight they offered a session of calming stretches. NGH. GO TO BED. I chivvied two into bed and one out of bed (he said he had too much work tonight to sleep early) and set myself back up in my bed desk.

Year 5, Day 305: It’s a takeout sort of day, crammed with meetings and running around, but I’m drawing a total blank on what to get. Also, my throat is killing me. I was optimistic and worked at my desk today for the first time all week but that was a bad call. It ate up too much energy. Or maybe falling sick was using up all the energy and it wouldn’t have mattered? Hard to say! Back to bed for me tomorrow. Tonight all I can do is try to get as much work done as possible before dinner and not work late again.

Instead I ruminate on hypernormalization and the feeling that our democracy, flawed and broken as it was, is completely going away. We have to keep taking the kids to school, to their activities, feeding and caring for them as normal. We have to keep up the house, put gas in the car, menu plan or get food on the table one way or another. We can’t just stop.

And from a money perspective, I’m worried because I have no idea what to do. I am working my tail off to keep my job and keep my income for however long that can last – we need the income to pay our bills, my staff needs their income to pay their bills. Even as things are falling to a shambles, we need to pay the rent and put food on the table.

But it also feels like I should prepare for disasters that I’ve never contemplated before – like the FDIC being dismantled and US banking systems failing. I’m contemplating moving some emergency money to an overseas bank (TBD) so that we’re not completely destitute if this attack on our entire country and every institution wrecks our finances.

Thing is, I am also under no illusions about there being any easy escape from this country if things go that deeply wrong. There is no safe haven. Canada doesn’t want us. Mexico doesn’t either, I’m sure. We’ve been awful. There is no country that isn’t racist, sexist, that isn’t prone to right wing hardliners and Nazis. We stand and we fight, we help others who are less fortunate – that’s our first response. We yell at our representatives to do something and we take care of our communities and the most vulnerable.

But I am not me if I don’t plan for multiple contingencies. It’s just never been less clear what roadmap or hierarchy of contingencies begin to make sense in all of this.

Year 5, Day 306: I’m deep in the hiring slog and was struck by a memory. When I was new to one of my first four year jobs, the office manager called me into the office. She told me that my brother had applied, could I work with him? She wouldn’t consider him if I said no. I was taken aback and felt the NO! well up from practically my toes. I could NOT work with him. I knew what he was like – flaky, bombastic, thought he knew better than everyone. It shamed me to my core to think of being associated with him at my workplace, where I was earning the money that paid our rent and for my school, and the idea of that livelihood being threatened near about choked me.

She didn’t call him back and we averted what seemed in the moment to be a potential crisis. I worked so many hours there that I paid for my entire college education and continued to pay the rent and all our bills. I agonized over that decision here, even. And it hit me all over again today: Was I wrong? Could that have been the stabilizing influence, the chance that he needed, to get himself on a path that would have led him through his dark moments? Or would he have done what he always did and screw it up somehow, only to take me down with him?

I don’t know. I don’t know why it bit at me today.

On a lighter note, PiC did the Costco run so we have provisions again and we have survived the week that kept kicking me in the shins. I’ve been getting sicker all week and will need the whole weekend to try to not get worse. Getting better is a whole other ask and may require the symbolic sacrifice of something.

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