By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (60)

July 26, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 127: At first, I thought this was a GET THEE OUT OF THE KITCHEN kind of day.

I boiled 6 eggs to make deviled eggs. They were all boiled the same amount of time and yet 3 were soft boiled, 1 was fine, the last 2 were put back on to boil because I didn’t even want to risk it. I added three more eggs to a new pot to boil and forgot about it and burned the eggs and the pot. Then I got into a fight with the formula dispenser and spilled half a pod of formula all over the counter and the floor. By midday, point, I was just grateful that no living beings were hurt.

It turns out my ill luck was more widespread than that. Everything I touched went wrong in some way. I made bulgogi, roasted broccoli, and roasted potatoes. The bulgogi was sort of watery, the broccoli cold, the potatoes slightly underdone.

I’ve been fighting to reclaim data on Google Photos with zero luck, it won’t budge despite my having downloaded and permanently deleted several GBs of files and photos since last week. I found a folder of 2017-2019 photos in Drive taking up space so I dumped that too. Somehow, a spreadsheet I use daily to store project notes, financial research, and other important stuff was caught up in that, and permanently deleted. I had to sit with some pretty nasty feelings for a while when I saw that “file was deleted” note. So much work, gone.

And given the number of times I saw warnings about “are you sure? Deleting these files permanently means they cannot be retrieved” I know they’re gone gone.

I’ll have to recreate it from memory as best I can over time. I’ll also need to look into how to sync my Google Drive files to our NAS because if I lose any even more important spreadsheets, I really will throw up.

*****

Money things, my phone. I’m running up against a serious lack of storage again. I only took the 64 GB phone when I upgraded to the Pixel and gave PiC my iPhone a couple years back. That was foolish of me. I’m on this mega mission to move all the photos off our devices and backing them up elsewhere so if I can get that done, I will reclaim that storage. I really don’t want to have to replace my phone until next year. I just bought a new phone for PiC last year, I’d like to go a year in between phone purchases if possible.

Year 2, Day 128: Maureen’s tweets (below) very much encapsulates how I feel about the world right now and travel. I still don’t want to because THE NUMBER OF DECISIONS we have to make with every single thing we do is overwhelming.

I don’t trust any organization’s recommendations fully and our pediatrician is great but definitely less conservative than we have been about trusting people (I don’t).

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I always wonder if my investments are tax efficient enough because I didn’t think about tax efficiency back in 2007. I assumed that my taxable account holdings were not tax efficient. Nicole and Maggie put my brain on this track again recently. This list from Vanguards’ 6 tax-saving strategies for smart investors suggests I’m alright:

Taxable accounts should hold tax‑efficient assets like: Index mutual funds, Index ETFs, Tax-exempt bonds, Stocks.

I’m not that adventurous, I have index funds and stocks in taxable accounts. Maybe I should add some REITs? I’d like something for real estate. Just not rentals again for a long while.

Year 2, Day 129: My streak of breaking almost everything I touch continues today. What jinx am I under???

*****

Woof what a day. I had my Ortho check up and that was good. They were actually on time so I didn’t waste a full hour on the appointment this time.

The day still felt jam-packed. It started quite early for me because PiC was up working so late he only caught a couple hours of sleep by the time Smol woke and couldn’t be bribed with crinkly toys any longer. We hung out for a while, then took Sera for her walk before going to pester JB just because we could. By the time PiC was up, Smol and I were rounding the corner to the end of their first waking period. We had JB crawl out of bed to come read to Smol before naptime, I figured that would head off the outrage that we’d put “their” baby down for a nap before they woke up. It’s cute that JB will actually get up before they’re ready without complaint for Smol where nothing else but a Big Event would do the same otherwise.

Twas a long day of work and parenting, parenting and work, interspersed with some organizing for packing. I thanked Yesterday Me for making enough dinner to reheat leftovers today while PiC took a much needed nap. I ended my work day well after 9 pm because I noticed someone was really behind on some work and decided to take care of their backlog. I try to only work third shift three times a week or less because I did it every day with JB and I’ve done my time. But the price of having all kinds of flexibility during the work day is that some nights are needed to make the work happen. In this case, work did happen, just not my own. Ah well. Sparing someone on the team an even later night is a worthy reason to give up a couple of my hours.

I tried to wind down for bed but then I read this thread on space travel and this article from Vice: MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.

Now I’m well spooked as to the imminent collapse of life on Earth because, for one example, despite how destructive Bitcoin is, people KEEP BUYING IT ANYWAY. Particularly after the pandemic, I feel like humanity is just too selfish and greedy and stupid to save itself.

Year 2, Day 130: Another early morning after a too late night. How is it Thursday already? And how am I on Day 8 of working on backing up our photos and STILL not getting any traction?? I started at 11.56 Gb of Photos, now I’m at 12.05 Gb even though I have removed (and backed up elsewhere) several thousand photos. What. Is. UP. My oh DUH moment: I was wondering why I’ve been struggling to get work done in a timely manner all week. Well, DUH. My brain has been distracted with these two additional ongoing tasks all week, no wonder my brain is creeping along slowly.

This has been me all week:

I’ve never seen a more accurate representation of my brain trying to accomplish one task. pic.twitter.com/vVFYhihBpW

— Sarah Dyer 🏳️‍🌈 (@pikapies) July 22, 2021

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You know what else is weird? Well, a lot of things are. One, being at the end of July, nearly, already. Two, reading people’s accounts of “we had a nice summer!” Three, reading people talking about having had a nice breath of hope and now being sad again about the resurgence of COVID. Nothing really changed for us so this summer has largely been a blur of same same with a dash here and there of socializing.

No sooner did I type that, we had two invitations for birthday parties come in for the same weekend. And so the floodgates open ….

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Also, a side effect of the data back up project: I keep getting blasted back into the past, currently the first three years of JB’s life, and feeling all kinds of nostalgia and sadness and wondering if we can give Smol the same level of parenting that we gave JB. The last is not so much a wondering since the answer to that is no, we cannot. We aren’t the same people and we have very different circumstances now. I have a lot of feelings about feeling like “different” = “inferior” though. I have to hope that it’s not but it’s hard to feel like we bit off more than we could chew or that we’re shortchanging our second kiddo. I have to remember that both kids are so thrilled to have each other right now that if they do keep getting along, their lives will be richer for that love, not less. I just know – “know”? – that things can change a lot over the years.

Year 2, Day 131: Lots about the show Psych doesn’t hold up over time, but this line, oh HOW I feel this line deeply: “Congratulations, Frank, your longest con of all was on your own daughter.”

*****

I bought PiC a compost bin that he wanted as a gift and boy howdy do we enjoy using it. I think there’s something to really relish when you previously used any old thing that sort of did the job but shift to a well made purposefully made thing after a long while. We really really like the functionality of the new bin that keeps smell in, bugs out, and doesn’t slump over the second it starts getting full.

People frequently say we should spend our money on experiences and not things, and I think they truly discount the experience of using well made things. Especially when you use that thing six times a day. (Of course PiC makes the same point about my phone that he thinks I should replace now because I use this thing constantly but it’s a big gulf between $50 and $900 or whatever a new phone will cost.) Anyway. It makes me think of Inside Out when the emotions find out that memories get flushed after a while to make space. My memory has never been great and it’s worse with the chronic brain fog so I didn’t need that scene to tell me that if you’re always only paying for experiences and not nice things, banking on the fact that you’re going to get better memories out of choosing the former, well, you’re going to lose those memories over time too. I still firmly believe it’s best to find the balance between the two, whatever that is for you.

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