By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (59)

July 19, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 120: PiC graciously took the 6 am wake up period with Smol, so I took the 8:30 am-12 pm shift with the kids. JB had tutoring for a big block of that time so it was me and Smol for most of that time. JB was predictably furious that Smol had to go down for their nap by the time their lesson was done, though, so I soothed their grudge with letting them do the bedtime routine of reading and singing. Their mood visibly improved with the wrangling of a sleepy, adoring, but also very grumpy (because sleepy) Smol Acrobat. After we completed the nap putdown, JB danced out to tell PiC: It’s your turn with the kids! Clearly, we have been doing the swappity-de-do for a while.

PiC took the next four hours after that and then we split the remaining evening chores.

*****

At lunch (I was working) JB asked PiC to text me: “Mommy I hope you don’t have too much work to do.”

Me too, kiddo. But I do.

Happily they decided to unload the entire dishwasher on their own though their primary assignment is only to do the utensils. That was nice.

*****

Money things, the coffeemaker: PiC’s french press was dropped and shattered so I had to order an immediate replacement. He says he’s not addicted to coffee but tell him he’s not going to have a coffeemaker for a day and see what happens, I dare you! 😉

Money things, my mouse: I have been fighting with my mouse for weeks and weeks and weeks. It keeps disconnecting. I finally went through all my old peripherals in the Computer Box and found one that does work but I hate the scrolling action on it. I’ve already adjusted the responsiveness up as far as it’ll go in the settings but it still lags and I hate it. I use it 8 hours a day, but am having trouble justifying the purchase of a new mouse just because I don’t like it. But then again it’s a lot of hours of use a day…. JB has been wanting to use a mouse with their set up but I was going to give them my Oldest Mouse that is much smaller and would fit their hand better. If I do that, I could retire this Second Oldest as a back up for them.

Year 2, Day 121: A 4 am start was Not Awesome. Smol cried for a while, went back to sleep for a hour, then went another round of crying/sleeping/crying. PiC got up with them until I crawled out at 7 to take over for 4 hours.

*****

We got the notification that there may be a space for Smol at daycare in the mid-fall and I’m so torn.

The daycare is opening up to nearly normal practices. 12 infants in a classroom again. Parents are allowed into the center again. Masks are still required for the non-infants but the grubby little infant disease vectors themselves will be free to drool all over each other as usual, again. O_O With or without COVID, my Spidey germ-detecting senses are tinglin’! I know it’s good for their immune system to be challenged but my immune system, upon being confronted by potent infant germs, will shrivel up and blow away. Leaving me, curled up in a ball and miserable. Nooooo……

I want my time and space and solitude; I don’t want to send my child each day among strangers (the other kids) when I have no ability to do COVID risk assessment anymore. The pediatrician says that he thinks Smol’s risk of contracting and becoming seriously ill is relatively low. Meantime I keep seeing exceptions like these kids (ages not mentioned): 10 children on life support as Mississippi sees surge in delta variant cases

I want the childcare; I also want to not spend $2000 a month. Obviously I knew the bill was coming and I know in the abstract it’s worth it (and for JB specifically it was very worth it, they were so happy!). Those are two separate desires – I think the teachers are absolutely worth their pay and should be paid well. I’m just struggling with being A-OK with waving goodbye to such large sums of money again for the next ohhh 48 months? I’d gotten used to having it in our cashflow/for savings. It’s hard to swallow the expense again. But wow do I not even remember what it’s like not to be parenting and working and parenting and working and spinning ten plates at the same time.

*****

Money things, The Chase CSR card: is raising their annual fee to $550. I would have done the math on whether we were still coming out ahead with all the card benefits but then I had to book travel on their site recently and it was the worst experience. Every time I tried to confirm the dang booking, the site would freeze, tell me the price had gone up, and refuse to book. It went up $100 in less than 2 minutes and they think it’s perfectly reasonable. I don’t! Any site that won’t even give you a reasonable 5 minutes to read the damn site’s terms and conditions at the point of booking is bullshit.

Money things, The HSA: is called many positive things for the tax benefits but we don’t get all those tax benefits in CA and emotionally I am not cut out for that thing. I am tracking all our costs to make sure we come out ahead this year but boy howdy do I not want to have to deal with a PPO and all the attendant complications of meeting a deductible, tracking our health expenses, and wondering if I am avoiding seeking care because I’m penny-pinching. I’m looking for an alternative HSA account administrator to hold our funds when and if I decide to quit this thing. A review of Lively by A Purple Life looks promising. I actually wonder if I can move it before we quit using it. I assumed we could not because they would have to accept our payroll deductions.

*****

Planning things for travel: We have to get a packing list together. We’re going to a memorial service for an old friend and I haven’t packed a bag in 18 months. Do I remember what to do?? I’m starting with a list. That will help.

Year 2, Day 122: A rare early morning meeting day where I was actually up well in advance of the meeting and could get some work done before the start AND pop into the meeting on time. It wasn’t long but I missed the moment when JB discovered that they woke up too late and missed Smol’s morning period. I could hear that ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! through my noise-cancelling headphones.

PiC took the brunt of the afternoon and late evening for which I’m super grateful. I was battling technology and lost this day’s battles.

Year 2, Day 123: I had signed up for baby watch all day today to give PiC more work time in trade for yesterday but yesterday’s technology travails continued into today. The entire day, actually.

It’s complicated but basically I have two data storage systems, one old and one new, and I needed to get the new one up and running before the old one died and I did not quite make the deadline. The old one choked on the volume of data stored and now it’s going to take me another few days to unstick the stuck things. But after a long long day of cursing, reading forums and searching for answers, I did get the new system up and running! All three major parts are set up to auto-backup.

Thank goodness I didn’t have anything else, fun or important, to do today! /sarcasm

PiC was reasonably good-natured about having to take childcare back on the day I’d initially planned to be his work day, saying we’d be in worse trouble if he had to play IT. It’s true. But it makes it no less frustrating for everyone when that’s my whole day. And that’s not the end to the matter either. Tomorrow I’ll have to hope that my set-up held up with the new system and my fiddling today in the old system was enough to shake loose whatever is happening there. If that sounds vague, it’s because I still can’t actually figure out what’s wrong other than it choked on too much data. My fingers are crossed that by the time you read this, I’ll have an answer.

I got some minimal bits of work done and stayed up late to tie up some loose ends.

A longtime friend shared some wonderful news that isn’t mine to share but I’m so thrilled for them. It gave me a really nice lift to know something good was happening in their life. Hint hint: if you have something good going on, please share!

Year 2, Day 124: Eye exam day!!

I cannot tell you how much I hate eye exams. They’re necessary, we try to stay relatively on top of eye health care like dental health care but I’d rather take a root canal (in early stages) than an eye exam by preference. It’s stressful! I always get transported to that feeling like I’m failing tests in grade school. Or high school, rather. The stakes were higher and I never failed in grade school. Definitely took some hits in high school. Because PiC tends to take most of the childcare duties at home and taking JB out for adventures that I don’t typically feel up to doing and happen more often, I tend to take the crappier parenting duties like the annual healthcare appointments.

I had such a headache after they took the sixteen pictures of my eyes with a blindingly intense flash. We both needed a new prescription, so we spent 25 minutes trying on frames, but then I gave up because I couldn’t find any that I liked that fit my face in the color I wanted. JB will get an updated pair as backup. When they return to in person school, I suspect we’ll really be glad of those backups. (I had upgraded our eye insurance this year specifically so we’d each get an extra pair.)

This ate up my entire day, this and a few critical work things. Ugh. What an end to a long and increasingly emotionally intense and stressful week.

The latter is just going to get worse as we prepare to travel for the first time in almost two years, for the upcoming new school year and all the glorious uncertainty there, and for the idea of Smol in daycare sometime in the fall. It’s so much change and uncertainty and our kids have no vaccine protection and !!!

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