By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (168)

August 21, 2023

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 143: Woof, it’s hard to tell but it’s possible that 15ish minutes of weeding for two consecutive weekends mornings utterly wrecked me. All my major joints so angry and swollen they’re radiating heat, and all my muscles are also angry. My body is more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than is healthy for a human. I wanted to wallow in bed all day. Couldn’t, of course. Monday being Monday, I had kids to get out the door, a hundred emails and a stack of reports to get through. Normally I’d pace myself more but I’m taking a day off to ferry everyone to appointments later this week and would rather clear the desk enough to ignore work on my ferrying day.

Year 4, Day 144: We didn’t make it a week before a report of a COVID case on campus cropped up. I’m not surprised. But more people are more surprised by the fact that we’re even getting reporting. Naturally, we then were notified that our district won’t be reporting cases anymore. What a sad state of affairs this is.

~~~~~

Good news bad news on my health front.

I hate meeting new doctors. I never know if they’re going to take me seriously and I hate having to make them take me seriously. So meeting a new doctor this week about my chronic sore throat problem strained my nerves until we started chatting and I realized this guy is at least 5 years younger than me. He reminds me of my younger cousin! That let me relax a smidge. Then the fact that he listened carefully to everything I had to say was reassuring. He took a look and spotted the issue in my throat, and gave me a rundown on treatment options along with his opinion on each. That brings me to the bad news part. He thinks this is my body overreacting to viral infections that I’m picking up from Smol Acrobat. Every. Single. Month. So it overreacts by producing a truckload of sores in the nose and throat while it’s trying to fight the infection and then … Sigh. Chronic severe sore throat.

Year 4, Day 145: I frequently feel like a bad or inadequate parent. A combination of never feeling good enough to want to play with my kids and feeling like I should want to.

I try my hardest not to consciously compare myself to other parents as much as possible but it’s hard not to feel it crop up now and again. Today, I had two small moments of good: Smol Acrobat asked me to build rock towers for them and they were pleased enough with my builds to give me cheesy grins for pictures. JB wanted to play catch but PiC wasn’t in the mood so I took them for 15 minutes of 2-square. (Not enough people for 4-square.) PiC would usually indulge every request, regardless of his own feelings, but it was better that I did it. Even if my knees feel swollen to the size of soccer balls (they aren’t, it’s just the feeling of inflammation), it actually felt better to me to play than not today. And on an extremely bad body day, at that. I’m kind of proud of myself.

Year 4, Day 146: Crossing my fingers that we settle into a manageable routine next week. I’m still recovering from my day of nearly back to back appointments for the family. Dentist, daycare dropoff, errand, doctor, short break, dentist again for almost two hours.

Back to School night is tonight and I couldn’t scrape together even an ounce of energy to go. PiC took the hit (and JB) while I prepped Smol Acrobat for bed. I’m not sure how I feel about the expectations for third grade but as usual, we’ll roll with it. Fundraising starts on Friday, that’s what we get in lieu of school supply shopping lists.

Year 4, Day 147: Food talk Friday! Just made that up. Sunday I used up all my egg boiling luck to whip up a batch of egg salad for our lunches this week. Win! We initially planned to do pizza one night to make the week easier but it didn’t work out so we made “fancy” ramen night with Costco tonkotsu bowls, roast pork from the freezer, frozen corn and soft boiled eggs (had insufficient luck left, they were too soft). But still an overall win. We had leftover small potatoes from my pot roast experience and that went into a yellow chicken curry (premade from Costco). Everyone liked that too.

I think this makes two weeks we didn’t wish we had done takeout to save some energy. I’ll want some soon enough, I’m sure.

*****

Housekeeping: You’d think we never washed the rugs around here. The bathroom rug is all fluffed up after I did a load of bathroom rugs and everyone is disproportionately happy about it. Small wins in the sensory department.

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