Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (10)
July 13, 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, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 15 and 16 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 15, Day 101: I think things are starting to open up in our county but I trust no one and when so many people are gadding about maskless, I’m staying home. I frame it as a choice so that it doesn’t feel like a forced confinement. My hands are still terribly swollen and my bones were filled with molten lava yesterday, so physically I’m not in good shape but emotions are a little less fraught today. It might be because PiC and I had a few good talks about our mental health and just basically took a little time to reconnect as humans. Also it might be because we pulled off a pretty nice Father’s Day weekend. Since I’m not an early riser (except for those days when I wake up in the middle of the night and simply can’t go back to sleep but that’s not quite the same thing), I couldn’t get up and surprise him with a Father’s Day breakfast and the whole deal.
Instead I played to my strength: dinner! I found two new to us local restaurants to order takeout from and we tried some fantastic Korean dishes and BBQ.
Week 15, Day 102: While I wouldn’t call it a silver lining to the pandemic, I am finding a few things that are not terrible about this situation for us personally. It only took me 100 days: No commute means I can rest a lot more and our mornings are about 90% less stressful – no rushing to wake up JB, no rushing. Social distancing means I don’t have to socialize with anyone I don’t have to (even if it also means I can’t socialize with people I DO want to, this is still a plus).
Week 15, Day 103: I didn’t leave the house at all today because work was a crushing load and also because I was busy checking on a family member who nearly died. STRESS.
Week 15, Day 104: We finally got confirmation that JB’s elementary school has set an early August start date and that their registration was processed so they are officially enrolled. This would be exciting in normal times but the complete lack of information on how they’re going to handle COVID means my excitement is in the negative zone. Best case scenario, according to their email, we will get a letter telling us how to prepare 5 days in advance, worst case is 2 days. What IS that?? I’d much rather they take the time they needed to plan and figure out how things will work and start late, with some real time to prepare, than this nonsense.
Also I finally got my act together and ordered some organizational storage bins. I’m not positive I made all the right choices but it was a start. I spent the next 36 hours eagerly anticipating my curbside pickup and hoping I didn’t run out of steam too quickly.
JB and I walked the dogs together, and had yet another encounter with a dog escaping the house and then getting locked out so it stalked us instead, and that dramatically prolonged our walk. Not awesome.
Week 15, Day 105: The Chase CSR card temporarily added a helpful redemption option: 50% more with Pay Yourself Back: Through Sept. 30, 2020, get more value from your points when redeemed for grocery store, dining and home improvement store purchases.
I tested this out by redeeming 12,114 points for a $181 statement credit. This is a nice way to motivate us to keep using this card since we’re not traveling for a good long while.
My storage bins were ready for pick up and boy am I glad we were able to do curbside. The line to get inside the store looked to be about an hour long! I spent that precious hour getting a start on my cleaning and organizing. Everything is still a mess, things are always messier before they get better when you’re organizing, too, right? (RIGHT??)
Week 16, Day 108: I don’t know why my phone kept buzzing this morning but it woke me at 8 am. Sheesh I’ve been tired. I stopped using an alarm clock when JB was born, my human alarm that they are, but they’ve begun to sleep in a lot and I am going to have to either be much better about getting to sleep earlier or go back to using my alarm to wake up at a more useful hour. I don’t know how PiC does it but he’s generally up before 7 most mornings.
Mondays are usually bad but JB’s attitude on this Monday was The Absolute Worst. We had such a hard time getting through the day. There was at least one fit pitched, and I was mad for at least two hours about the bratty behavior. We had a long talk about it at dinner, calmly, but boy howdy. We needed that hour-long quiet time break when they were banished to their room for rest.
Week 16, Day 109: Let’s see… an adult flea hopped on board Sera on their walk today which sent me running for the Advantix. They were due for the next dose anyway. I know this was an opportunistic ride along because I check these dogs regularly and there was no evidence of other fleas or flea dirt but I always have a visceral reaction to seeing any fleas.
I discovered that despite my week long treatment and twice daily checks, Seamus’s eye took a sudden turn for the WORSE so I have to run him to the vet. A new one, to add to my stress, because our regular vet is mysteriously temporarily closed.
I boiled a pot dry and nearly scorched it but thank goodness it didn’t.
That was all before noon. The day didn’t exactly look up from there.
Week 16, Day 110: Know what sucks? Waking up to the whine of a mosquito attacking you.
The rest of the day was much like that too. JB’s lesson was cancelled so we had to pivot. I still sent PiC out for his planned run and JB had to be an independent operator for a while. Work was kind of a twenty fire alarms sort of pressure all day long, I didn’t get a break until five. Everyone needed something from me, it felt like. Plus it’s a short week so I have to get extra work done.
Seamus meanwhile continues to resent me because I have to put him in a headlock four times a day every day to get ointment in his eyes. I’m trying to save your vision, dog!
Week 16, Day 111: This was an exceptionally rough work day. Trying to get everything squared away ahead of a long weekend so that Monday isn’t horrific on what felt like half a brain wasn’t at all fun.
Week 16, Day 112: DAY OFF! HAMILTON! DAY OFF!
I still worked a bit in the morning during JB’s lesson but only enough to help out my staff. Workaholism mode: Off.
We only did the first Act because as it turns out, listening to and watching Hamilton with a five year old is very different from listening to the soundtrack with a one, two, three, and four year old. The five year old has so very many questions! But they were useful for opening dialogue about the actual history and how people are complex and not just good or bad. (Except slaveowners. Slaveowners are bad. And rapists. And pedophiles. And … ok there are people who do bad things and are bad and nothing “good” they do is untainted by that.)
I’m scared of how schools are planning to handle the fall. In person learning >>> online only learning but also children are little, contagious snot puddles. Apparently some Boston-area schools are trying to take a hybrid approach (online and in-person) which feels like
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… which feels like the worst of all the possible options.
Children are absolutely disease vectors normally so I have a very hard time believing they are somehow exempt from COVID.
The hybrid option makes sense for trying to get the most vulnerable kids (abused kids, for ex) out of unsafe homes for some part of the time so they aren’t entirely at the mercy of their abusers without mandatory reporters in their lives but for suppressing the spread of the virus, it does not.
There certainly are ways to make it better for those who need it most, but our school district keeps choosing the worst of the worst possible options. It’s like they want everyone to get sick! UGH.