Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (142)
February 20, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 326: I rarely have the Sunday Scaries. What I do have is Sunday how am I starting a new week with my tank on completely empty???
I had a “blocky” weekend. One activity in the morning followed by lunch and putting Smol down for a nap whereupon I crashed for a few hours. Saturday even included a surprise nap for me. But I’m still not starting the day recharged or rested because this damn cough has been wrecking any semblance of rest I could have gotten. Here’s hoping my doc has prescription cough meds I can get immediately.
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Just realized that I started this memory in last week’s post and didn’t have time to finish it: I’m feeling alllllll of my 40 years today. When I was a young teen in martial arts at the community center, we had a classmate. I think he was 40? He could have only been 30. It sort of all looked the same from the vantage point of a 15 year old. Anyway, Harry was older than us by a lot and the poor guy crackled when he tried to stretch out with us. We were limber and young and wow, we really took it for granted. I did, at least.
Now I’m snap-crackle-popping when I turn my head and maaaan. It feels like a little bit of the past coming back to haunt me.
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We got the prescription cough meds just before the pharmacy closed. 🤞🤞
Year 3, Day 327: I got the best Valentine today! My dear friend sent me a Valentine of feeding a mealworm to a bat from the Centre Wildlife Care. “My” bat is so cute with that mealworm sticking out of her mouth.
The rest of the day was normal stuff: work, try to eat before 2 pm, squeeze in a make up therapy session, reschedule my dental cleaning from later this week to April because I still can’t stop coughing up a lung, pick up JB from school, walk Sera, run JB to their self defense class.
We tried a new Chinese takeout place today. It’s between home and class so it’d be a convenient option to have on these days. (We actually did have leftovers to eat, I had just forgotten.) I splurged on honey walnut shrimp, it’s an old favorite that I never get because it’s so expensive. At $16 a plate, we won’t be getting it again soon but it was a nice little treat. Naturally, it’s the one thing that both kids LOVED.
Smol ate three mandarin orange fruit cups, a banana, 1.5 honey walnut shrimps, with a little rice and chow fun around the edges. If you’re wondering if they’re still making me batty with their refusal to eat proper meals: yes. I snuck in some bits and pieces of snow peas and broccoli but it was a fairly thankless battle until the end when they gently patted my knee to request “Sit. Peas.”
Year 3, Day 328: Another night of coughing and sleeplessness. The tessalon perles and Mucinex combo are making no difference.
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The past two days were the COLDEST so today feels like summer with the sun out and no wind. After picking up JB, I caught the ‘itis. I don’t want to work, I want to SPRING CLEAN. I especially want to tackle the gift box which is getting a little out of control. The shipment of cute tees I bought on clearance for the niblings for Christmas 2023 arrived and they’re sticking out of the box like a little kitty tongue blep because they don’t quite fit.
My compromise was to pick off a few small things that didn’t require brainpower. I lightly reorganized the emergency supplies drawer in the kitchen, taking expired things out to the garbage and fitting the new emergency lanterns in. We took the two big boxes packed for shipping to Pine Ridge over to the UPS store and I let the coordinator know they’re on the way. I paid some bills and cut out the used pages of coloring books that are otherwise fine to share with other kids.
Nothing exciting, just small necessary things that felt good to have done.
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My nose felt a bit tender today. The real surprise is that it only just now feels tender after a solid month of wiping it. I credit the regular application of lotion which I’m normally quite terrible at, and am grateful we can afford lotion tissue.
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I felt a surge of inadequacy today thinking about people with 3 or more kids managing to do 2, 3, 4x as much as I do. I hate that I’m just barely making it from one day to the next. As I write this, it occurs to me that this may be the anxiety / depression talking so I’m trying not to lean hard into how bad that makes me feel. I will observe that I don’t like how much/little I am able to handle now and leave it at that.
Year 3, Day 329: A check to the school PTA cleared the checking account today. Good thing it was only $10 because I completely forgot to log it in my tracking spreadsheet when I wrote the check. Thankfully, we have enough cushion now that one small check doesn’t wipe out the account. I clearly remember when it would have. I clearly remember the full-on panic when a $50 check was cashed after I’d forgotten about it.
I’m also grateful for Ro-Vac, for the washer and dryer, and the dishwasher. Ro-Vac’s cleaning the house as I work, while the dishes and the load of laundry are being washed.
Meanwhile my head is stayed grogged up on the Benadryl taken last night to force some sleep through the coughing fits. It didn’t really work well enough to help me rest, but my head felt full of cotton most of the day. Today’s quest: get that codeine cough syrup in hopes that will let me get some cough-free sleep.
Hopeful note: I didn’t burst into an hour long coughing fit immediately after laying like, as I’ve done every other night for weeks! Could this work?!
Year 3, Day 330: I hail thee from the realm of “who thought it was a good idea to run a week’s worth of errands on a work day??” Blergh.
I was up at 5 am coughing, curled up in a miserable ball. I really woke at 6 to Smol hollering “eat! eat!” I rescued an exhausted PiC who had taken the night shift. Smol and I hung out for the next two hours, eating breakfast and playing with magnetiles (affiliate link). Classic toy, we love them. They used to just play with the tiles by stacking them, or knocking them over, but this morning? They had a VISION of what they wanted to build.
JB has the day off so both kids and I went to daycare to drop off Smol. Normally, Smol is a dawdling poky pants. I tell you what, today was the fastest dropoff ever. JB ran to the classroom like their pants were on fire and Smol raced after them, cackling up a storm. Too much cackling since they’re still not over their own cough either. They arrived at the classroom triumphant and wheezing.
We stopped at Costco for gas ($42) on the way home for an hour of work (for me) and card writing (them), before we went for a quick check up with their new doctor ($20). We grabbed some pastries for lunch on the way home ($16), and then dug into our respective projects: work again for me, and for them: going through their bookshelves to pull out the books and toys they no longer want. I’ll have to sort that pile into donation and Save for Smol piles later on. Nothing like creating more work for myself! But it’ll be satisfying to have one or more bookshelves feel less cluttered. Right??
Last update: Right!! I sorted the keep and donate piles, cleared Smol Acrobat’s shelf of adult books we’ll donate, and shelved the 3 foot stack of books Smol has inherited from JB. I packed up two boxes of books to donate to our local bookstore, and two boxes of books and clothes to ship to the Allen Youth Center in Pine Ridge. It was VERY satisfying!
I mean, you’re doing more than I am and my kids are older, the only chronic disease I have is PCOS, I’m not running a non-profit on top of my job, and it’s been a month since I’ve been sick, etc. etc. etc. You’re obviously comparing yourself to the wrong people.
It’s funny that I think you’re juggling more than I am but I think that’s the nature of this sort of thing, isn’t it? We don’t really know what all everyone is doing and comparing doesn’t do anyone any good.
“I felt a surge of inadequacy today thinking about people with 3 or more kids managing to do 2, 3, 4x as much as I do.”
Yeahhhh. I have multiple coworkers with 3 kids each (3 of those in my team, and both previous managers!) and I’m just suffering over here with 1.
One thing that helped me with this was an online thread about this exact topic, someone who said “I don’t choose to live my life on the hardest difficulty level” and that, at least, weirdly helped me with this.
That’s actually a great line! I mean, it FEELS like I’m already on the hardest difficulty level and there’s no reason to go looking for more trouble.