Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (15)
September 8, 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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Week 25 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 25, Day 171: I stopped buying fast fashion many years ago but I kept the clothes bought when that’s all I could afford, and discard them only when they fell apart.
It’s kind of a surprise how long wearing some of these things are! Today, I’m wearing a shirt that I bought something like 12 years ago from Forever 21 and it still looks like new. No stains, tears, pulls or fading.
It’s a heavy work day as usual for Monday but some changes I made have borne enough fruit for me to be able to get through it in a normal work day for once. And it’s been a while since that happened. But at the same time, I still feel tremendous guilt over being an emotionally disengaged parent when I’m working. I don’t feel like this when they’re away, just when they’re here and happily bouncing everywhere and wanting attention.
Week 25, Day 172: I’m tired from not great sleep which helps nothing at all, but I’m also struggling with a terrible lack of patience and mood today. I keep hydrating with ice water to try and stave off a five alarm scream. I have a snack. I change tasks to get away from the minor irritants that are tickling the trigger. I make myself breathe deeply and speak clearly, calmly, and firmly to JB instead of letting them get under my skin.
I can’t decide if I want this day to be twice as long which would allow me to take some calming detours, so I can still get things done, or just be over already and start over.
Finally, a break to make an experimental batch of gluten free cornbread seemed to help.
Week 25, Day 173: I expected today to be a tough day because I had a long doctor’s appointment with blood work and that impacts my work schedule but I forgot the other impact. It’s utterly exhausting! And me being me, I was completely confused how much the appointment took out of me. I was so fatigued after getting home that I could barely rally my last remaining brain cells. While it was nice to chat with my doctor who I like and respect and who treats me with respect, I can’t say it was worth the loss of the rest of the day. I had to triage and ditch work early because I was approaching the point of being useless and two steps after that is worse than useless: making mistakes on important decisions. It was time to cut my losses.
Week 25, Day 174: Two hours of this morning were eaten up by technology gremlins and then another half hour was eaten by another gremlin. Then it was off to the races trying to finish a full work day in a little over half a day. Not stressful at all!
JB did their best to help out. They pronounced: you don’t have to stop working, I’ll make lunch!
As they are FIVE I had some concerns. But once I established they weren’t attempting anything that would later result in fire trucks, I sat myself back down to crack out some work and let the kid show me what they could do entirely unsupervised. And honestly, I was impressed. They made me a gluten free low carb ham and cheese sandwich with a side of carrots and two kinds of dip. They even insisted on serving it to me at my desk, a la Chef Dad, instead of just letting me know to come to lunch. They made the same for themselves and heartily enjoyed their lunch with the savor of independence at the table nearby. Really, I was impressed.
Week 25, Day 175: Unexpected letters from the IRS are never good. This one definitely wasn’t. I found out that I had missed a Pretty Big Line Item on a past tax year’s filing and I have no idea how that form never made it to me or into my records. But here’s where therapy paid off: when I tracked down the mistake and figured out it truly was a mistake, I was able to let it go emotionally. Normally I’d have kicked my own ass up and down the street for being so (insert various judgy phrases here) thus adding the pain of stressing and being angry to the pain of paying a whopper of an unexpected bill. I did have to suffer the pain of the two hours on hold to the IRS to iron out the final payment because I was disputing one small item listed, that was rough and meant I didn’t get to take a half day as I’d hoped, but I did get the paperwork finished up and ready for the mail. And thank goodness for my new habit of keeping more cash on hand than the absolute bare minimum of what’s needed to pay the next week of bills. That also saved me some heartburn.
It’s so strange learning to let myself make mistakes and not feeling terrible about them.
That’s awesome that you were able to handle the IRS issue with such a healthy mindset. I still always beat myself up over mistakes…but for a shorter period of time now, so that’s better. Progress, not perfection.
I, too, am feeling exhausted and not getting enough sleep some days. Mrs. Done by Forty and I have recently started to go to bed at the same time and, when I lock up my phone in the time lock safe, that definitely helps.
Impressed by the ham sandwich, too: I’m looking forward to more independence from Baby AF.
That’s exactly what my therapist says too: Progress, not perfection.
I’m honestly quite surprised that it went ok too, but I will appreciate the lack of self imposed emotional burden and hope that I continue to make progress on that front.
Baby AF will get there! We just have to make a very conscious decision not to continually step in to correct mistakes, and to let them practice doing the things.
In our experience, when you’ve made an honest mistake, the fees/interest on those tax mistakes is pretty small so I’ve told myself we just got a low interest loan from the government (I think we’ve only made major mistakes on state taxes though, so YMMV).
I think this worked out to something like 6% interest but I am honestly not willing to look at it too hard because I WILL get mad if I scrutinize it. I’m going to take the emotional win and just go with that.
JB is the greatest. They are capable of amazing things and I would love to hang out with them again! Someday, JB. Someday. Hugs to you all. We’re dealing with similar stuff over here. Trying to work from home. Trying not to feel guilty about the kids bopping around and us ignoring them. Trying to balance online school for 3. Home updates (sewage backup in the basement, wasps in the wall). The usual. 😉
We were just talking about y’all in Alaska the other day! They are all for an Alaska trip “after coronavirus”, as am I. I hope the kiddos are adapting ok to the whole online school thing, I think they really DO do just fine when they’re ignored during work hours, as long as they’re fed, clean, and healthy, it’s just hard not to feel bad about it.
Wasps in the wall???? EEEPS. We have a deep dislike of wasps and mosquitoes. I hope they are banished FORTHWITH.