By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (57)

July 5, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 106: An unexpected boon of Smol’s early morning wakings is that if I can get up too, PiC and I have time to talk for a few minutes like adult humans with interests in the world and live together. This morning we talked about the photos of our dear recently deceased friend that I found over the weekend while doing data backup. We couldn’t decide at first the best way to share with their widow but landed on making a photo book. So that’ll be my thing this and next week.

*****

I read The Pout-Pout Fish (Bookshop, Amazon) to Smol. They’re not quite old enough to appreciate it yet but it nailed my feelings today. I feel sick (Blub), achy (Bluuuub), and tired. . . (Bluuuuuuuuub).

*****

PiC cooked all weekend and I’m so grateful to him.

*****

Smol slept through the night most nights last week but come Friday, that went out the window. They just had this burst of development and they had to wake up the first night because HANGRY! The second night because … I’m not sure why but just needed to be held and sung to for a few minutes. The third night was to babble and raspberry to themselves a few times. Weird, but funny!

One less funny side effect of the development is their mood swings. So many swings. Happy sad happy sad.

*****

There’s a chance we might have daycare in October so I inputted the cost into my spreadsheet for the last three months of the year. O_O This upended my delicately balanced cashflow and budget. Daycare is so expensive, even part-time. I don’t want to reduce our savings but we’re going to have to. Better to know now. At least I already funded our brokerage for our planned weekly investments for the next quarter. We’d sold some investments to shift our allocation so that helps soothe my nerves.

Year 2, Day 107: I guess we’re on the not sleeping streak now. Smol woke up twice last night hollering a hunger ballad, despite having had a LOT of milk (for them) throughout yesterday. Growth spurt? Maybe. But they’re almost obnoxiously difficult to feed, they’re so distractible and disinterested in their bottle half the time and I knew this was going to happen if we had a second after JB who was the champion eater. I’m still really hoping we can turn around their interest levels. Hope hope hope.

*****

Of course that’s the fourth night in a row that I’ve slept badly so today I’m officially a wreck. A shuffling, unraveling mess. A mummy rather than a zombie though. My brain mostly functions, it’s my body falling apart in protest of this unholy treatment. As five o clock neared, I could feel my body parts checking out. Knees, done. Fingers, swollen. Ribs, ciao. Elbow, oddly creaky.

I had to work from bed most of the day and lay down after lunch.

Year 2, Day 108: Today feels like..

Friday again.

It is not.

😞

I’ve been Friday-level tired all week. I still feel sort of flu-ey. One easy way to tell that I’m really off my game is how slowly I’m working. It’s taking twice as long to complete a set of work as usual.

*****

As I stood at the sink washing bottles, it was quiet enough to pretend I was alone in the house for a regular pre-pandemic work day. That’s going to be nice when it finally happens but probably also weird for a while.

Year 2, Day 109: I’m absolutely desperate to fall asleep before ten pm. It’s been a week now that I haven’t been able to sleep before 2 am. Tonight, it’s me and 5 mg of melatonin!

My schlubbiest-mom day ever. By midday, I was covered in fur, a weird blend of puree/formula spit up, and drool all down my front. None of that was mine. Gross.

*****

I did manage to walk away from work with an almost reasonable amount of work done despite eleventy-ten things breaking or distracting me. All things had to be dealt with but so frustrating that it ate up my effective work time.

Walking away early meant I finally cooked a meal for the first time this week. Rice, bok choy, baked salmon plus baked shrimp tempura (bought frozen from Costco). I am both exhausted and satisfied with the meal.  I tried the toaster oven which runs hotter than our big oven since I only had two small fillets. A drizzle of olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper, wrapped in foil, baked at 375 degrees for 20 minutes = perfection! We should do more fish meals, they’re easier and healthy.

Year 2, Day 110: Sera’s vet appointment was definitely a surreal experience. Emotionally, I was just not ready to be back there and had been putting off Sera’s vaccines. She’s also due for her first senior blood panel so we did that along with the exam. Thank everything, the vet thinks that she likely just has the upper respiratory  infection that’s been hitting all the dogs in the area. Her other health, physical exam and bloodwork, looks excellent. I’m so glad.

*****

This day was hectic and stressful. We had hired a housecleaner for a deep cleaning, she’d come recommended by friends. Unfortunately for the first deep cleaning, she brought two other people to help her and they just completely stressed us out. They didn’t communicate with us when they came in, they just got started immediately. There was some damage to the floor and dings put in the walls. They were careless in pulling furniture away from the walls, our furniture is secured to the walls for childproofing and earthquake proofing. PiC noticed they’d climbed on furniture to clean up high that wasn’t strong enough to bear an adult’s weight and we were really worried about the potential collapse.  There were other things that were problematic that had us both keyed up and tense most of the day. He had the day off thankfully but it was a normal work day for me and so, stress upon stress upon stress!

I know a lot of people who have housecleaners and really love it, and she came recommended by people I know who are pretty particular as well, so I am wondering if this is more because she brought two people who were rushing through the work and less a reflection on her. At the end of the day, PiC is unwilling to do this again. I am a little more on the fence. The reason we brought them in was because I can’t do a lot of the heavy cleaning that’s needed over time and I still can’t. But they also didn’t do the heavy cleaning I wanted. We had particularly pointed out high traffic areas that we preferred to be focused on and they didn’t address them in this session.

I’m thinking of either asking for the main lady to just do the high traffic area plus a little ticking over in the other rooms for a normal whole house rate, because that’s way more important to us, or trying someone else. But while it’s nice to have the dustbunnies and the hair tangles banished, and gleaming surfaces again, which will all last 20 hours tops, I’m hesitant to try again.

:: Do you use cleaning services? Was it hard to find someone who met your standards?

Sharing is caring!

Email

Twitter

Pinterest

0