July 27, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (321)

Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 7, Day 83: Some stranger on LinkedIn asked my laid off friend for a meeting about their former role ahead of their interview with former bosses. For the job they were laid off from. That struck me as weird but I can’t tell if it feels weird because I know their company and about the layoff or if it really is weird. Probably it just feels weird because from the perspective of knowing why so many roles are open these days. It’s fraught and people have non-disparagement clause to worry about.

I suppose they could be clueless or so centered on their own needs and wants they aren’t thinking about that. Or they could be smart enough to try sussing out if this is a red flag situation by seeing if the former employee had anything good to say about the company. Since they “couldn’t” speak about the company, that could point the applicant to this being a red flag situation. Or, it could be something entirely unrelated. You can’t really pull a lot of info from that short an interaction from the outside looking in. Ah well.

Year 7, Day 84: Every few weeks, Walgreens runs a loss leader on small Arm & Hammer laundry detergents: 3 for $7.50. I did the math and the per ounce price on the sale is better than the Costco price by just a smidge. Usually I wouldn’t bother with it on that basis alone but since it does beat the Costco price, I need saline solution, and I could also combine them with another BOGO50% off and a $4 off coupon on pads, they all added up to an order just big enough to qualify for $10 Walgreens cash back. I’ve got the $10 WG cash from the last one of those, so I’m out of pocket $30 for a $54 order with another $10 WG cash. That reward may have to be manually applied, for some reason their system is bad at applying all rewards, but luckily chat takes care of it so it hasn’t been a big time sink. We won’t need to buy more detergent for a good stretch after this so I can go back to ignoring the loss leaders for now unless I decide to add some of these to the donations box.

Year 7, Day 85: Something (viral) got both me and JB. It’s feeling cold-like since there’s no fever, just a sore throat and congestion for them and a sore throat and massive aches for me. More massive than the usual anyway. I am quietly resenting this. Every week I try so hard to get back on the fitness horse and I manage about three days worth of workout and then bam! Something like this derails me again. It’s so frustrating! But for once I made the smart call and put myself back to bed once I’d gotten everyone out the door.

Year 7, Day 86: Another day of enforced rest in hopes that this won’t get much worse. It’s messed up my sleep though. Resting during the day mostly means working from bed but there’s always a point where I feel like I’m too tired to live. Usually I force myself through but these past two days, I’ve curled up into a ball instead. Probably contributing to recovery but almost definitely contributing to unrestful sleep later.

I saved enough energy to try my chef friend’s suggestion for pork chops for dinner and they weren’t quite right but we’re getting closer to the juicy and not bone dry pork chop. Not quite there. Need to cut them thinner (from the Costco log) and try cooking through pan frying next time. These were thick chunks because I was exhausted when cutting up the log.

Year 7, Day 87: Frustration with my alternate income efforts. I applied to the Chase Ink Business card – Chase has been flashing signs at me that I’m preapproved! for this card! for months.

Ok fine, I have some brain available to do this. I did all my math, confirmed that I could hit the required spend for the bonus and thawed all my credit card freezes for the day to apply. Only to get the “thanks for applying we’ll be in touch” message. WHAT. I’ve been a Chase customer for … so many years. Have a Chase checking account and actively use my Chase Freedom card all the damn time. What’s the problem? If the bonus weren’t so good and we didn’t have such a big lump of expenses on the horizon, I’d have taken the hint and moved on. I really wish I had abandoned it. But no, I’ve been stupidly stubbornly trying to follow this through and so far this is what I’ve achieved with my efforts:
1) A secure letter stating “they are worried this application was fraudulent so call us”;
2) I’ve called them, had an automated message ask did you make this application? Yes? Ok then all set! You’ll hear from us in 7-10 business days!
3) But I don’t.
4) So called them again to get a status update to which Chase said what? what status? what application??
5) ARGH.
6) Got transferred to an agent to find out what the heck, and they told me I had to provide identification information – as if I haven’t been paying you people every month for the past 20 years and you don’t know where to find me or how to bill me – through the secure system by clicking on the link in the email.
7) The link in the email triggered a slow creeping feeling of “is this a long con of some kind”. Think about this one a lot. Reviewed my security measures: I logged into my Chase site using my password keeper, so I wasn’t going from a search site to a fake site (I’ve caught that a few times so I’m much more careful now about what sites I click on from a search page). I found the phone number to call from that site so I was talking to someone from Chase – unless they managed to steal and redirect the calls going to that number. I have no way to defeat that. My credit reports are all locked down again. I guess it’s not a scam? There hasn’t been any weird activity on our accounts.
8) Went to the email and supplied my DL which includes my DOB and address. But again, I reason, all my accounts are locked down. Am told to call back 24 hours later to finalize the application.
9) Call 24 hours later, they verify my identity again, and ok “you’ll hear back in 7-10 business days”.
10) 3 hours later, I get the SAME secure letter stating “they are worried this application was fraudulent so call us” again! WHAT. THE. FUCK.
11) I wait a day to call back and ask what in the name of this cursed reality is going on, please, what is the problem? They insist there is no problem, it’s just standard processing. Y’all are wasting my time because nothing is wrong??? I assured her that I know it’s not her fault and I’m not mad at her but if I have to spin around this vortex again, you can forget the application, I will be moving all my accounts somewhere else because I have Had It.

“I totally understand,” she says, “you can check your email every couple of days for an answer, but it should be complete now and the secondary team is processing it so you will receive a card in the mail in 1-2 weeks.”

The card that you still can’t tell me is approved or not. That card.

SIGH.

July 20, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (320)

Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 7, Day 76: Microburst cleaning: I bought a bulk pack of customizable compartment bead organizers and used one of them to organize my desk supplies. I’ve been using an old desk drawer organizer to hold odds and ends: binder clips, paper clips, rulers, calculator, staplers, tape measures, post it notepads, etc for the past 15 years but it’s very inefficient because it sits on a medium height shelf and I can’t see into it. Mostly I grabbed things by feel and memory.

This was a terrible way to inadvertently encourage detritus build-up, and a really ineffective use of vertical space. All the small items fit into two closed boxes after I extracted small supplies from another medium bin and organized them together. That emptied 90% of the tray and freed up 1/3 of the medium bin. The remaining larger items were rehomed into the free space in the medium bin, and voila! Neatness! This freed up some shelf space with better accessibility. It’d be even better if I could have it set up as a mini shelving system so they’re not sitting atop each other and could be pulled out but this is good for now.

I might tackle the kids’ Legos with the remaining boxes. I got into the beads briefly on the weekend but it turns out while JB has a vast variety of beads, they aren’t in the quantities I’d thought. They have wide variety but not deep supplies. We’ll need pivot to more shallow boxes. It’s possible we didn’t need all 8 of these deep storage bins but we’ll see.

Year 7, Day 77: Sticker shock at the produce shop we used to frequent: Corn on the cob was TWO DOLLARS AN EAR. Nectarines were $4 per pound. Asparagus was $6 per pound. If we didn’t need to bring produce to our friends’ BBQ, I would have fled empty-handed.

Five of my colleagues are gone now with another 15 of us scheduled to go in a bit over a month. I continue to harbor both deep resentment along with that weird layer of relief, but the bitter is stronger right now.

Year 7, Day 78: The ten bags and giant box of cousin hand me downs and community donations are sorted! I plopped on a stool and went through everything quick as I could, picking out a few things to keep, discarding anything that wasn’t good enough to share, and packing everything else. Four out of five pairs of sneakers went to recycling, one pair is in good shape. A stack of what might have been cloth napkins are quite yellowed, I might try to wash them before donating instead of sending to fabric recycling.

I kept a stack of undershirts for JB; a couple books in perfect condition; a set of heavy duty kids cups in rainbow colors which deeply pleased SmolAc – they hand washed them immediately. I kept a small crossbody bag with so many zippers to test. It seemed much too small at first glance but in the trial run so far it’s been quite nice to have all the separate pockets for keys, phones, wallets, masks and more for a quick outing like a dropoff and return home. If I keep this, I need to cover up the weird logo on the front. A cute nerdy patch would do the trick. I also kept a pair of squishy house slippers. The terrycloth doesn’t feel pleasant, but they’re free and squishy so good enough!

What’s left for donation fills two enormous boxes. I would fit in them comfortably with room for a kid to squish in with me. And I’m not tiny like I once was! Lots of clothes in good condition that have just been sitting closets, backpacks with plenty of wear left in them, that sort of thing. Once I do a sweep of our kids’ outgrown clothes to add, two more ~ 40 lb boxes will head to the reservation. That’ll make 7 moving boxes this year woo!

Year 7, Day 79: I just got the paper bill in the mail for a procedure a few months back. Delta Dental won’t cover part of the procedure so I thought we’d owe another $600 but they wrote off more than half of the remaining balance as a courtesy (proactively even, this is the first bill I’ve seen since getting the denial letter) so that trimmed it down to $200 we have to pay now. Whew, I appreciate that!

All phone calls this morning trying to get my CalABLE account problems squared away and to get Kaiser scheduling settled. Three hours of attempted phone calls (they kept saying we’re too busy, call later) or waiting on hold whisked away the last of my energy and I put myself to bed for a few hours of much-needed rest.

Year 7, Day 80: It’s July so of course the weather is All Gloomy. It’s so foggy that it feels like a light misting rain. I suspect this means the green beans I tried to start outside are not coming out of their shells. Maybe I need to bring them in to attempt inside germination.

I think my cleaning energy ran out for the week. I’m feeling deflated and depressed (not necessarily in the clinical sense, more in the metaphysical sense of feeling soul-crushed) and ever so tired.

July 13, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (319)

Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 7, Day 69: Welp, this might be me paying the price for thinking I could do two medical things in a row: a massage to loosen up the lumps that pass for muscles and a vaccine in the same week. It feels roughly like a giant jumped on me with two feet. After an extra 10 hours in bed on Sunday, I’m still feeling well below baseline. That’s a spanner in the works for this week. I’ve got a donation pickup scheduled for tomorrow but that presupposed that all of Sunday was going to be sorting community donations. That didn’t happen. Instead, SmolAc, still sick much more dramatically than I am, in both senses of the word has continued cosplaying a barnacle stuck to my side today. We did drop off together, then did a bit of light gardening for outdoor air, then snacked painfully and slowly. Lego time saved us both for an hour.

Year 7, Day 70: I cancelled the donation pickup for today and settled myself in for just chaffeur duties, puttering and nursing care. Not a lot of puttering happened but they seem to be at least less feverish today. Good thing I set my expectations really low for one, and my job no longer matters for two.

Told PiC not to bother trying to spell me, his job performance still matters (maybe, who knows how they decide who to lay off) and mine doesn’t. I’m only doing the barest of minimums now because they’ve squeezed the last blood they’re gonna get from this stone. For the next two months it’s all about my health and my family’s needs and anything I can do to help my staff get jobs.

Year 7, Day 71: Finally got my garden delivery! Soil acidifier, compost, and more soil since the potatoes are going to need hilling before I know it. The winds like to carry off a thin layer of soil every time we turn around, and last night happened to be especially gusty. I dug into the acidifier and compost first, spreading it around the blueberry and blackberry bushes. Fingers crossed that was done right / enough. I need help lugging out the 3 cubic foot bag of soil which – that sack and I barely made it into the garage so there it’s staying until I have a second big-enough pair of hands. SmolAc is currently in a mostly helpful phase so 70% chance they would pipe up “I can help you, Mommy!” and 100% chance they would be crushed under the bag.

Meanwhile I’m sprouting wee sugar snap peas in cotton out of pure curiosity and it’s neat to actually see the little sprout as it shows to come to the surface preparatory to emerging from the seed. No clue where they’re going to go. They can’t go in the bag that used to be dedicated to them, the mold spores are waiting to pounce. Could they thrive at the top of the potatoes soil mounds alongside the green beans that will be planted once the soil is heaped up? Worth a shot. My gardening is very haphazard.

Year 7, Day 72: Big medical mail day. I’ve been waiting on a reprint of a prescription receipt for 7 weeks for FSA redemption and last week had given up on it arriving. Even deleted it from my to so list so naturally here it is! The FSA would be maxed out eventually with or without it – therapy and medications add up. Next year I’ll be missing having two FSAs badly. My Ambien refill landed as did JB’s meds and the SPF 50 sunscreen we’re trying.

Speaking of Ambien, it’s a new as needed prescription. I haven’t had to use it too often, sheer fatigue has been enough many nights, but when I do it’s worked reasonably well. So far there haven’t been any weird sleep-calls or texts or purchases. That I know of. Hopefully Sleep Me is simply too uncoordinated to buy anything while on Ambien. My sleep set up has finally stabilized too. These days, I layer two shirts, plus a heating pad for the muscle aches, and layer 1 Oodie blanket and a beautiful gift quilt on top. That combination seems to ward off the cycle of temperature dysregulation of sweating a royal mess and then waking up shivering from having sweated through a shirt and hoodie (so gross).

Year 7, Day 73: My Bing point total isn’t high enough for a redemption but I do my research in advance of having enough points to redeem. Except that 3 for 3 redemption options are all out of stock and I AM NOW FORMING A CONSPIRACY THEORY. Something is wrong there??? Are my points going to disappear?? All my efforts gone for naught? I hope not. (A friend pointed out that it lines up with corporate shenanigans at the end of the quarter which actually makes a lot of sense – I recently learned that corporations will do crappy stuff like refuse to pay their freelancers for 2-4 weeks leading up to the end of the quarter or after. Just garbage behavior.)

*She was probably right. Once the quarterly earnings were reported, along with 4800 layoffs, the ability to redeem points was magically back.

I’ve squeezing every single earning opportunity big and tiny because, of course, every penny counts. It goes into the mental piggybank for after the severance comes out.

We got a big check this week reimbursing past out of network medical care which was a happy surprise. It was immediately chopped up to cover upcoming big bills: dental expenses for 2 (2026), auto and home insurance, the little left shores up the property tax account. That settles my stomach a little bit.