By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (6)

May 11, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $1,021.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.

Weeks 7 and 8 of shutdown in the Bay Area.

We have a bit of a routine now. Mornings: Walk dogs, feed dogs, breakfast. JB has a lesson online, PiC and I work during that period (I oversee the lesson just as a behavior monitor.) Usually they are released to go hang out with PiC for a snack and games after the lesson unless he has conference calls. Afternoon: Lunch, I wander out after I’ve cleared the critical parts of my work (if I’m lucky). I’m juggling my work, training new staff, giving feedback, overseeing policy issues and questions plus the usual household stuff: ordering supplies, watching our spending, thinking about how to organize our lives a little bit better.

Week 7, Day 1: I had to run an important errand today and it threw my entire work groove out of whack. It took hours to get focused on work again, and before I knew it, I was derailed again by fatigue. Rude.

I did get lucky with the weather though! The sun was shining fiercely enough to be warm even with the usual gusty wintry winds we get through our neighborhood, so I set up camp in the garage for a couple hours to get “beach weather” while working. Ahhhh….. The change of scenery really did my mind and body good. I still felt ill and tired, but it did boost my spirits for a good hour and I’m grateful for it.

Week 7, Day 2:

I had to get checked out today and that was really weird. My second solo outing in two days, after 40 days of being home and around the neighborhood only on short walks, and I was feeling such strangeness of being out and about when the world is so altered. Seeing and talking to people at the doctor’s office was also incredibly strange. Some people were reassuring, some people were brusque and off-putting. Some people were slightly hysterical about the medical building’s policies.

One enormous sigh of relief: The possible crisis with PiC’s job blew over. We will be seeing some changes in May, details still unknown, but I’m so many kinds of grateful that it’s not the layoff that we were concerned about.

I’m thinking about how my mentor used to tease me about my 12 month cash emergency fund. She considered it excessive. It could be excessive for her with her very very stable job but I remember the Great Recession far too clearly not to want an 18-24 month cash fund. THAT was probably too much, though, considering how behind I have been with investing for the future. On the one hand, yes it was important to get off my caboose and invest. The habit was the important thing. On the other hand, considering last year’s high prices, I may have been better served if I had held on to the 18-24 month cash and invested a portion of it this year. Wait. No. That’s not true. In a pandemic, I wouldn’t have been able to let go of the cash and I still wouldn’t have made any inroads into our investing goals. Never mind. Hindsight fails to account for the behavioral changes I needed to make.

Anyway. The point is, if we hadn’t had a year of cash in hand, that concern over PiC’s job earlier this month would have been full blown panic. Facing one income when we need 2 to cover our expenses, less than a year of cash, the stock market down, and being stuck at home during a pandemic? Nope. No way. Eliminating one of those four factors as an issue made a big difference. Going down to one job with 12 months cash would let us hold out for about 18 months before having to sell stocks. If facing a recession and a down market, the longer we can wait to tap those stocks, the better.

Of course I don’t know what the heck the market is doing now or why.

Week 7, Day 3: SUPER grateful for PiC and his relaxed schedule this week.

I had to make up all the work hours I lost on Monday and Tuesday and by the time I staggered away from my desk, I had conquered the worst of one set of backlogs. Both good and bad.

He took care of JB, all the dog walks and feeds, made dinner and a bunch of other things I wasn’t even conscious of. (I later noticed that he had scrubbed the sink because he’s awesome.)

I sorted the laundry, soaked Seamus’s paw, cleared most of the dishwasher.

A mundane day, in a good way.

I miss mundane days. I like them. It means nothing set my heart racing while I tried to put out a metaphorical fire, personally or professionally. It means I was able to relax a bit and find a flow. It means nothing very significant went sideways today and I got to take deep breaths.

Week 7, Day 4: I needed to spend time learning about money to soothe my ruffled feathers today. I woke up in a bad mood after a restless night and the whole day went like a covered wagon over cobblestones.

By day’s end, I was DONE. Very little restores me like quiet time with spreadsheets and numbers. Even better, this area of investing was one I was long overdue to learn more about and it felt so satisfying to start to put together a sensible plan. I’m about halfway through this research and look forward to doing more.

I ended the day craving cheeseburgers, donuts, and beignets. Also very mundane!

Week 7, Day 5: I’ve spent an entire week forcing myself to churn out work and feeling very guilty about my terrible attitude about working. I don’t want to work. I’m tired. I’m discombobulated. I’ve got all kinds of physical stuff going on. We have a super active five year old running circles around us. We have two dogs needing care and attention. I’m grateful for my income and my job and the opportunities it presents me and mine. But I also want to not be working during this befrazzled time.

I’m getting the job done reasonably well. I’m just having a bit of cognitive dissonance between the gratitude but also Do Not Want.

Week 8, Day 1: We spent hours basking in the sun and shivering in the wind on the weekend and we decided to do it again for lunch today. It was just a short break but I needed the combination of sunshine and stepping away from my desk where I’m on triple duty working, minding JB, and household planning. JB’s lessons are generally going well but they don’t cope well with Mondays (nor do I) so it was a rough morning.

PiC got an update from work, doesn’t look like they’ll be returning to the office for at least two more months which is good. I’m not comfortable sending JB back to daycare with things as they are right now, nor can I be the primary on caretaking. We need him right here!

They also took off for a bike riding lesson that seemed to go over well. I never really learned how to ride a bike well, I just wobbled along and went as fast as I could without crashing. I have never had a bike that fit me either, though. Yard sale bikes were all we could afford and you got what you got. I wonder how much that matters.

I’ve eaten an average of 5 tacos/quesadillas a day for the past 4 weeks. What’s your pandemic food?

Week 8, Day 2: I had “what day is it?” brain ALL DAY. It had to have occurred to me about ten times that it was Tuesday but every time it felt like a surprise. But somehow, by some confluence of good fortune and good planning paying off and a lot of work, I actually caught up on a ton of work this day. Of course that meant that PiC had JB almost the whole day and got nothing done, I have to thank him for taking the hit so I could have one shining moment where I could finish early, legitimately, and go for a walk with the whole family by 6 pm.

Happily, I was finally able to get my JB Lesson Schedule up on a large easel sheet of paper and that’s a help to get me oriented. I am pondering how we can implement a Kanban board of chores for JB now.

Sadly, though we made it to bed by 8 pm, I squandered my head start on sleep. It’s possible that the combination of living in a pandemic PLUS watching a disaster-type movie (Pacific Rim) PLUS reading an apocalyptic event book was just too much for my brain.

Week 8, Day 3: We had briefly started a block schedule where we traded off 2 hour blocks of minding JB vs doing whatever you need or want but it feel by the wayside. We have defaulted to JB with me for about 2 hours in the morning during which PiC works or occasionally goes for a run and then he generally has charge of them the rest of the day. This means he’s doing the before and after hours work shifts that I used to do when JB was a baby.

But today was a very rare break – I actually got through all my critical and important work at a reasonable hour and I got to do a little yard work!

Then to top off the evening, Sera vomited five times in 3 hours, and JB turned into a screaming ingrate. Awesome.

Week 8, Day 4: Things were better this morning. 100% less vomit, bile, and screaming temper tantrums! I had to run an errand, it was my third outing since the shutdown, and driving was still eerie but it was a lot busier out there than I had expected. There were also a lot more bad drivers. I think there’s a temptation to be distracted by the weirdness, for myself, but there were also just plain bad drivers running red lights as usual. I don’t miss that about normal life.

JB had to write me an apology letter for their actions the day before. I think that was a better consequence for their poor choices than just losing a treat or a privilege (and not just because most of those are things that would impact US just as much as them and I am not in the business of punishing myself when dealing with an irate child).

PiC has been jonesing for a camping tent for years and I finally gave him the nod to order one this week since he would like to teach JB how to set up a tent and maybe if we get our outdoor space in order, they can go on an “adventure” like Angela’s and camp in our yard.

Week 8, Day 5: An unexpected 77 degrees outside today – what a boon!

:: How are things in your neck of the woods?

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